Rob van Dijk
Director
Rob is a consultant with a passion for innovation and organizational development. He has 15 years of experience across a wide range of companies and works with them to build future-proof, people-centered organizations.
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During Create the Future 2026, a powerful call to action was made: how do we ensure that the greatest talent is applied to the most urgent challenges of our time? In a world where complex issues such as climate change, social inequality, and the energy transition are becoming increasingly pressing, it is essential that talented professionals use their skills to drive positive change.
In the expert session “The Future with Robotics: Why Scaling Starts with People, Not Technology” Peter Boom (Haskoning, left) and Rob van Dijk (nlmtd, right) shared their insights on how robotics can play a role in this — and why the key to real impact lies not only in technology, but in people.
The urgency is real — but readiness is low
Across sectors like healthcare, construction, transport and energy, labour shortages are structural and growing. Robotics and AI adoption in the Netherlands remains in its early stages, with most organisations still in pilot mode. The case of Dutch rail infrastructure illustrates this sharply: only 45 specialists remain who can weld railway points — a job that must be done at night. Robotic alternatives exist, but scaling them is blocked by regulation, fragmented governance and procurement structures that discourage long-term investment.
“We are now in a phase where people know they can manipulate the robots.”
Don’t fit a robot into an old process
A central theme across the session was that organisations fail when they bolt a robot onto a legacy process. As one participant shared, when a heavy goods handling cobot was introduced, workers began subtly sabotaging it — not out of malice, but because the process was never redesigned for human-machine collaboration. “We are now in the phase where humans know they can manipulate the robots,” the speaker noted. The lesson: redesign the process first, then robotize.
“We talk too much about technology and too little about the people who have to work with it.”
People are the real scaling factor
The session’s interactive discussion revealed a powerful consensus: the biggest barrier to technology adoption is not technical, but human. Participants from organisations ranging from Port of Rotterdam to Schiphol and the cleaning industry shared similar experiences. Success stories — like Philips Healthcare, where doctors became robotics ambassadors — showed that peer-to-peer adoption beats top-down mandates. Failures, such as a Dutch bank’s RPA project that collapsed after 18 months, demonstrated what happens when people are not brought along in the “why.”
Looking ahead
The session closed with a clear call to action: start with the people who are enthusiastic, invest in cross-disciplinary training, update outdated job descriptions, and — above all — co-design the robotic future with the workforce, not for them. Leaders who automate their own inbox before robotizing the shop floor earn the credibility to ask others to change. The technology is ready. The question is whether organisations are willing to do the harder work of transforming themselves.
