Materialise CEO Fried Vancraen at the EU Innovation Convention: “Let’s use technology to build a better and safer world”
Early last week, Materialise founder and CEO Fried Vancraen was a panelist at the EU Innovation Convention during the session entitled Which Markets? Choose the Future.
Innovation Union is the name of all the initiatives that the European Union has rolled out in recent years to ensure that Europe becomes an innovation-friendly environment. The EU wants to use its ‘Innovation Union’ project to help brilliant ideas become great products and services that bring growth and jobs to the economy – like 3D printing, for instance.
Fried Vancraen was one of many distinguished speakers – including a panel of Nobel prize winners, Peter Vesterbacka of Rovio (aka ‘the company that makes Angry Birds’), Prezi founder Peter Arvai and Eze Vidra from Google for Entrepreneurs.
During his talk and subsequent participation in the Which Markets? panel discussion, Fried introduced key components from today’s 3D printing industry, the ecosystem in which this technology can flourish and the role that 3D Printing can play in creating a better and healthier world.
“I have always believed that a company needs to have a higher mission than just creating products. And the yardstick that we have used to measure ourselves at Materialise for the last 24 years has always been: are we using these technological advances to build a better and safer world? I can’t think of a more important contribution that a company or an entrepreneur could make.”
Fried Vancraen
The European Convention tweeted some of the highlights from Fried’s contribution to the panel discussion below:
@MaterialiseNV 3D printing is about an entire evolution happening in different industry sectors #EUIC2014
— InnovationConvention (@IUConvention) March 10, 2014
@MaterialiseNV Let’s develop technologies that really make life better #EUIC2014
— InnovationConvention (@IUConvention) March 10, 2014
@MaterialiseNV We need to learn to appreciate people in their different roles not only in companies, but in society. #EUIC2014
— InnovationConvention (@IUConvention) March 10, 2014
Materialise was also on hand with a booth in the Innovation Showcase, where we demonstrated 3D printed objects (including objects created by our talented i.materialise users), answered questions posed by convention attendees and, at the end of two days, got a lot of people excited by the possibilities opened up by 3D printing technologies.
Innovation Convention 2014 – day 1
Innovation Convention 2014 – day 2
