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IO+ Week: Innovation in politics. Or not?

Our weekly overview offers an overview of the most interesting stories around key innovations every Sunday.

Published on September 28, 2025

innovative voting
Bart Brouwers

By: Bart Brouwers

Bart, co-founder of Media52 and Professor of Journalism oversees IO+, events, and Laio. A journalist at heart, he keeps writing as many stories as possible.

Regular readers of our newsletter and occasional visitors to this website know that our raison d'être is linked to all those innovative people and organizations that are working to help solve the major problems of our time. However, to do that properly, it helps enormously if our politicians are willing to support those activities. For example, with legislation that gives innovation a boost wherever possible, so that barriers disappear and new initiatives are given a chance.

Now, we all know that some political parties are more sympathetic to these kinds of ideas than others. But no one really knew how that would play out in the long term. And yet that is extremely relevant for the people who want to base their choice on this knowledge on October 29, election day in the Netherlands. So we got to work: last summer, Frans van Beveren built a machine that could analyze all 6,400+ motions, bills, amendments, and proposed changes. In the months that followed, the machine was further fine-tuned and improved as necessary, allowing our editorial team to focus on creating content.

Our main question: how innovative are the parties' votes? A pro-innovation score was calculated for each political group by weighing the votes and the sentiment (positive/negative/neutral) against each other. We classified votes as pro-innovation when they supported policies or measures that actually promote new technologies, sustainable solutions, or the conditions for innovation. The result is an overall innovation score and a score for four subtopics: climate and sustainability, innovation in healthcare and agriculture, data, and community. Here is the overall ranking:

haagse innovatiecheck

You can read the complete results on IO+. Last week, we published the first episode of the series, which we have conveniently named “The Hague Innovation Check.” In that article, Elcke Vels delves deeper into the main conclusions, including a ranking of the most innovative parties. In the coming weeks, new episodes will follow in which we highlight specific themes and grill the key players. If innovation is an important theme for you, be sure to keep an eye on the series!

Watt Matters in AI

November 26 is fast approaching, the day we will be holding our Watt Matters in AI conference. Everything about the exorbitant energy consumption of AI systems, but above all: what solutions are there to prevent this from getting completely out of hand? Tickets are available via Watt Matters in AI.

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A podcast every day

We'll keep saying it: every morning at 6:30 a.m. (on weekdays), a new podcast is waiting for you. In it, our AI colleagues Oliver and Shelby discuss the two most interesting topics of the day. This makes the IO+ Daily the ideal way to fill your head with some optimistic news from the world of innovation and technology. See you again tomorrow.

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Enjoy your Sunday and don't forget that a new episode of IO+ Daily will be waiting for you tomorrow morning at 6:30 a.m.