If vital facilities fail in the Netherlands, the business community will immediately face major problems. The majority of companies can no longer function within half a day if there is a failure of electricity, telephone and internet or other ICT services. This is evident from the Dutch Innovation Monitor 2025, which was published on Tuesday.
If the electricity goes out, 64 percent of companies immediately stop functioning. Within 24 hours that percentage rises to 90 percent. Three quarters of companies cannot survive a day without telephony and internet, and if there is a three-day outage, 86 percent will be in trouble. Approximately 77 percent of companies cannot survive three days without cloud services or email. Failure of the water supply, payment transactions or supply of raw materials would, on average, cause companies to encounter problems slightly less quickly.
The Dutch Innovation Monitor is carried out annually by SEO Economic Research on behalf of the University of Amsterdam. This year, more than three hundred companies participated. This year’s research focused in particular on the impact of geopolitical unrest on companies and the application of ‘key technologies’, including AI.
The National Coordinator for Terrorism and Security (NCTV) and the AIVD intelligence service have been warning for some time about attacks on vital infrastructure in the Netherlands, for example by countries such as Russia and China. The government launched the campaign ‘Think Forward’, which encourages Dutch people to prepare for a 72-hour situation without water, electricity or internet with an emergency package.
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In such a situation, companies run into problems a lot faster than citizens, the authors of the Innovation Monitor note. A day of power outages causes problems for less than half of Dutch people, and most people say they can survive a week without telephone and internet.
According to the Innovation Monitor, two-thirds of Dutch companies have taken some measures to be more resilient in the event that vital facilities fail. For example, they have built backup systems or stockpiled additional supplies. ICT companies and companies that operate internationally are on average the best prepared for an emergency. More than one in five companies have not prepared anything at all, according to the research.
Less climate ambition
The Innovation Monitor also shows that companies are increasingly reducing their climate ambitions. Three years ago, 61 percent of companies indicated that they would have a “negligible ecological footprint” in or before 2030. That percentage has steadily declined in recent years; Meanwhile, only 35 percent of companies say they will be climate neutral by 2030 at the latest.
The share of companies that are only climate neutral after 2050 or do not formulate climate ambitions at all is also increasing: from 23 percent in 2023 to 31 percent this year. In particular, international companies with the largest ecological footprint have become less ambitious, the researchers write, without naming individual companies. Earlier this year, CBS already noted that companies are investing less and less in sustainability.
The use of AI within Dutch companies has increased in the past year, as is also evident from the Innovation Monitor. On Monday, a group of more than fifty experts advised the cabinet to allocate billions of euros for an ‘AI Delta Plan’. The Innovation Monitor shows that many companies have already ‘catched up’ this year.
The use of AI has now become established in about forty percent of companies: the capabilities of organizations and their employees for using AI have increased compared to last year. AI is particularly used in ICT and financial and business services, the researchers write, while the industrial, agricultural and energy sectors have even less “AI maturity”.
Many investors fear that the often significant investments in AI will yield insufficient returns in the long term. The Innovation Monitor provides a positive picture in this area: companies that know how to use AI efficiently also report better business performance. “Investments in AI are finally starting to pay off for companies and increase productivity,” the researchers said. According to the researchers, it had not yet been possible to determine to what extent AI supports or replaces existing business processes (and employees).
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