Innovating is my way of life: I believe deeply in our collective ability to build a healthier, fairer, and more sustainable society. My role is to help people and organisations see the bigger picture, recognize their place within it, and find the opportunities that allow real change to emerge.

Rianne Valkenburg is Fellow Design-driven Innovation of Technological Solutions in the Innovation, Technology Entrepreneurship & Marketing (ITEM) group in the Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences (IE&IS)at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Her main responsibility is to initiate and orchestrate strategic and cooperative partnerships for impactful research, in particular in the domain of Agri-Food. Her research focusses on innovation ecosystems, stakeholder participation, futuring, and new business models and cooperation practices.

Valkenburg is founder and value producer of LightHouse. Where disruption creates systemic change, people and organisations need to change their behaviour and routines too. LightHouse supports organisations choose direction, articulate shared ambitions, and take practical steps in an uncertain environment. 

Valkenburg practices a system- and design-driven innovation approach, designed and tested in years of experience, both as scientist and as advisor. 

Rianne Valkenburg holds a master’s (1992) and PhD (2000) degree in design engineering from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). From 1993 to 2003, she worked at TU Delft as Assistant Professor in Innovation. Overlapping, from 1996 to 2006, she was board member of KIVI, the Royal Institute for Engineers. In 2003, Valkenburg was appointed Professor in Human Technology at Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen. From 2009 to 2017, Valkenburg worked at The Hague University of Applied Sciences as Professor Designerly Innovation. 

Next to the positions at universities, Valkenburg has been a senior business consultant for different organisations, e.g. as Program Director for the 3TU.Foundation Design Initiatief. In 2012, Valkenburg co-founded LightHouse at the Innovation Lab at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). In 2019, she was appointed Fellow in the ITEM group.