Maarten Verkerk

About Maarten Verkerk

Maarten Verkerk is a chemist, an organisational theorist, an ethicist and philosopher. He has a broad experience in industry, healthcare and education. A thinker who always searches for the combination with doing and vice versa. He promoted in Technology and in Organisational Theory/Philosophy. He managed (big) organisations and complex networks. A competent plant manager with the guts to implement groundbreaking social innovations. An experienced manager who knows how to translate complex problems into practical solutions. A lover of Marx, Nietzsche and the Bible.

Innovation is a leitmotiv in Maarten Verkerk’s long career. Within the industry, he developed new products and processes. He built a completely new plant. He had a leadership role in social innovations within manufacturing, care innovations in a psychiatric hospital and in an innovation network within health care. He is also involved in innovation within education. Time and again, he knows how to enrich on the job situations with ethical insights and philosophical reflections. As always, this leads to more insight and better solutions. Among others, he worked for Philips, Vijverdal Psychiatric Hospital, Vita Valley and the universities of Eindhoven and Maastricht.

From the boardroom to the shop floor, Maarten Verkerk challenges people to break new ground. He is capable to kindle enthusiasm to solve difficult problems. He loves to work in a context in which, on one hand, the road goes deep, and on the other hand, practical solutions are being materialised.

Verkerk dares to raise questions about meaning and ethics within the organisation. As a professor of Christian Philosophy, he loved to challenge his students to think further. He has applied this ‘further thinking’ as a director within different organisations and networks. In 2014, Verkerk was a member of the Schnabel committee, which was established to give advice on ‘completed life’. He has strongly contributed to laying the ethical basis for the decision-making.

Maarten Verkerk has many publications on his name. He was chief editor of the book ‘Iedereen beter. Een toolbox voor zorginnovatie’(BSL, 2019). With Jan Hoogland he published ‘Ecclesiastes for Managers. Worldly Wisdom for Executives and Professionals’ (Dordt College Press, 2018). He was one of the editors of ‘Breakthrough: From Innovation to Impact’ (The Owls Foundation, 2014). He also wrote a chapter for the book ‘Another State of Mind: Perspectives From Wisdom Traditions on Management and Business’ (eds. R.J. Blomme and B. van Hoof, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Moreover, he has published a lot in international scientific journals. With some colleagues, he recently wrote about durable power systems of the future in Philosophia Reformata, and in the Journal of Enabling Technologies about designing houses for people with dementia.