Born in Belgium, Jean-Jacques Degroof earned his MBA and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A philanthropist, educator, and venture investor, he found fulfillment mentoring budding entrepreneurs and providing funding. Jean-Jacques Degroof has remained active in the MIT community, supporting numerous programs in aging research and entrepreneurship education. He has served on the external advisory board of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship.
The infrastructure and support geared for entrepreneurship at MIT have produced successful MIT spinoffs such as Tulip. While technology has improved manufacturing output through more effective and efficient machines and equipment, Tulip points out that the most valuable resource, people, have been left out. Using cloud technology, the company enables manufacturers to develop factory floor applications that increase employee production instead of automate it away. Tulip's software connects people, machines, and sensors to facilitate agile manufacturing. In a pilot project, Tulip trained new operators on a sophisticated manufacturing process in a biopharmaceutical company. The previous way of teaching new operators was to repeatedly guide them through the new procedure with a process engineer and an experienced operator. Using its interactive software and sensors and feedback from the workers, Tulip reduced the training time by close to half.
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