Bas van Abel

About Bas van Abel

Bas van Abel is an entrepreneur, designer, and technologist with over 20 years of experience in social innovation. He has a passion for changing the economic system through a design approach. He believes that companies play an essential role in the transition needed to achieve a more sustainable economic system. As a designer, Bas delves into the invisible world behind our production systems, brings the problems to the surface, and uses his enterprises as a means to demonstrate that it can be done differently. Bas is an experienced speaker who not only inspires his audience but also provides practical examples to empower them to take action on sustainability.

Bas is the founder of the successful sustainable smartphone manufacturer Fairphone (fairphone.com) and co-founder of the circular startup De Clique (declique.com). Bas gives guest lectures on sustainability, innovation, and entrepreneurship at renowned institutions such as Nyenrode, ESADE, and Cambridge. He also advises companies on their sustainability transition. He is a co-author of the book “Open Design Now” and is an Ashoka fellow, a network of the world’s most prominent social entrepreneurs. His work has been featured in various media, including VPRO Tegenlicht (the honest enterprise), CNN, The New York Times, and Der Spiegel. Bas was the ambassador of Dutch Design Week in 2016.

With Fairphone, Bas has built nearly 10 years of experience as CEO in starting up and growing a company into a successful international player in the extremely competitive telecommunications market. Fairphone’s success is built on his design approach, which takes into account people and the planet as much as possible in sourcing materials, designing, and manufacturing the Fairphone. Under Bas’s leadership, the company raised 20 million euros in crowdfunding, was the fastest-growing technology startup in Europe, and was declared the most sustainable Consumer Electronics company in the world by Greenpeace.

Additionally, it has won numerous (inter)national awards, including the Dutch Coolest Dutch Brand 2020 award, the UN Momentum for Change award, and the German Greentech Award. Personally, Bas has also received several accolades for his work at Fairphone, including the prestigious German Umweltpreis 2016, the Global Economy Prize (along with Klaus Schwab and Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller), and the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award issued by the World Economic Forum. Bas is still involved with Fairphone as a non-executive board member.

With De Clique, Bas established a new successful social enterprise in 2019, focusing on reusing organic waste streams such as coffee grounds, peels, and food scraps. De Clique collects waste streams from large companies, supermarkets, and hospitality businesses in urban areas through its raw materials service. It develops products in collaboration with partners where the waste is used as raw material for the production of items such as bread, soap, beer, meat substitutes, animal feed, and compost.

These products are sold back to its customers. De Clique has successfully raised investment based on a steward-ownership model, where only non-voting shares with a profit cap are issued, ensuring that the company can only be guided by its mission. De Clique is one of the first Dutch companies to have realized this setup.

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Bas worked for 10 years as a creative director at Waag. Waag is a media lab that operates with a team of designers, artists, and scientists, applying public research methods to technology and society. Bas has supported both profit and non-profit organizations at Waag with their innovative challenges. He also established the Amsterdam Fablab, a public mini-factory, and launched the world’s first open-source restaurant.

His experience as an entrepreneur, combined with his creative and technical background, enables Bas to deliver a compelling narrative drawn from his own experiences and expertise, allowing him to delve into various topics such as entrepreneurship, brand development, product design, sustainability, and supply chain management. His experiences and insights as an entrepreneur are both inspiring and practical for an innovative approach to sustainability.

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