This month, to congratulate INNOPAY managing partner Vincent Jansen on 20 years with the company, we asked him to tell us more about himself and his work.
Vincent Jansen joined INNOPAY in August 2003 as a consultant. He had actually hoped to study music registration at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, but when he realised that his piano-playing skills didn’t quite make the grade, he dabbled in a variety of different subjects, from applied physics to civil engineering and business economics. Then at the end of the millennium, he caught the ‘web development virus’ and worked as a full-stack developer of web applications for geographical information systems before eventually joining INNOPAY. Today, his role as a managing partner spans client projects, human resources (recruitment and people development) and business development. One of his main goals is to double the size of INNOPAY across the Netherlands and Germany in the next three years. He has been on countless business trips for client projects and conferences, and he particularly loved spending time in Sydney, Kuala Lumpur and New York, but the amount of international travel has decreased since the pandemic. Vincent lives in the centre of The Hague with his wife and two daughters. The door-to-door commute to the office, by bike and train, takes him about an hour.
To be honest, it was a twist of fate. After the company I worked for went bankrupt, I was figuring out what to do with my life when I got a call from Chiel Liezenberg, who got my cv through a mutual acquaintance. He had just founded INNOPAY with Douwe Lycklama and asked me if I was available for a short project. And the rest is history!
It’s the people who make up INNOPAY that I enjoy most. My job allows me to work with a lot of different colleagues on various projects, both for clients and internal projects. The past two decades have flown by thanks to the constant development and change within the company. But although so much has changed over the years, our spirit and informal culture have remained the same. I love the fact that we’re a place where bright minds challenge each other and have fun while doing so.
That has varied over time, but if I have to pick one right now then I would say eHerkenning. We worked together with a lot of bright people from various public and private organisations to create business/organisational identity as a network solution, on different levels of assurance, with fine-grained mandate management. I was involved as the scheme architect from the beginning and am very proud of what we pulled off. To my knowledge, it’s still one of a kind worldwide.
In Europe, it will be the availability of the EU ID Wallet. Although it will probably take more time than we all hope, it will bring new, high-assurance data rails to every individual and business in Europe. After that, the availability and cost of infrastructure will no longer be an issue, so we can all focus once again on creating solutions to actual problems.