Deborah Nas

Why organisations work with Deborah Nas

• Her book Design Things That Make Sense sets out a codified methodology: 24 strategies to strengthen what technology offers users and 13 to reduce the resistance that causes adoption to fail. It gives innovation teams a structured diagnostic rather than a set of principles to interpret on their own.
• She founded the Centre for Quantum and Society at QuantumDelta NL – making her one of very few people who can address quantum technology’s ethical, legal, and organisational implications in terms senior teams can act on before the technology reaches commercial scale.
• Her position leading multidisciplinary research teams at TU Delft – on mobility futures, quantum societal readiness, and energy transition – means her perspective is shaped by live scientific frontier work, not commentary on published trends.
• She is on the investment committee of InnovationQuarter Capital, a €143 million deep tech fund, and on the supervisory board of Hardt Hyperloop – direct sight lines into where deep tech investment is moving, not just where it currently stands.
• Her starting point is the psychology of technology resistance – the reason most implementation initiatives stall – which is the question most organisations have not structured an answer to and the one that most directly explains expensive innovation failures.

Biography highlights

• Professor of Strategic Design for Technology-based Innovation, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft
• Initiative Lead and founder, Centre for Quantum and Society, QuantumDelta NL
• Author, Design Things That Make Sense (BIS Publishers) – a practitioner framework of 37 named design strategies for technology-based product innovation
• Visiting professor, Politecnico di Milano
• Investment committee member, InnovationQuarter Capital (€143 million deep tech fund); supervisory board member, Hardt Hyperloop
• MSc Industrial Design Engineering with honours, TU Delft; 16 years co-founding and running a strategic innovation agency

Biography

Technology that works and technology that people will actually use are two different achievements. Deborah Nas, Professor of Strategic Design for Technology-based Innovation at TU Delft’s Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, has spent 25 years studying the gap between them. She began at Philips and KPN, then spent 16 years co-founding and running a strategic innovation agency before anchoring her work in research and teaching at TU Delft.

Her core contribution is a codified methodology: 24 design strategies to strengthen what a technology product offers and 13 to reduce the user resistance that causes adoption to fail. Published in Design Things That Make Sense (BIS Publishers), the framework draws on consumer psychology and is structured for direct use by product teams and innovation managers. She also teaches it as a visiting professor at Politecnico di Milano.

She has extended this work into the next generation of technology adoption challenges. As founder and Innovation Lead of the Centre for Quantum and Society at QuantumDelta NL, she is developing the ethical, legal, and societal frameworks organisations will need before quantum technology reaches commercial scale. She is also on the supervisory board of Hardt Hyperloop and on the investment committee of InnovationQuarter Capital, a €143 million deep tech fund.

Organisations that work with her are not typically looking for enthusiasm about what emerging technology can do. They want a structured answer to why technology investments fail at the point of adoption – and a methodology that gives their teams a way to act on it.

Key speaking topics

• Technology adoption and consumer resistance
• Human-centred design for technology-based innovation
• AI strategy and organisational readiness
• Quantum technology and societal implications
• Deep tech ecosystem and investment landscape
• Future of work and intelligent systems
• Innovation strategy for established organisations

Ideal for

• Chief Innovation Officers, R&D leads, and product strategy teams working with emerging technologies
• Boards and senior leadership teams making investment decisions on AI, quantum, or deep tech
• Corporate innovation functions examining why technology projects stall or fail at adoption
• Government and public sector bodies engaging with the organisational and societal implications of advanced technologies

Audience outcomes

• A clear framework for understanding why technology-based products fail at adoption – and what design decisions change that outcome
• Working familiarity with the Tech Design Strategies methodology: 24 strategies to strengthen product benefits and 13 to reduce user resistance
• Practical orientation to how AI and quantum technologies will affect their specific industry or sector
• Ability to separate technological capability from technology adoption as distinct strategic problems requiring different organisational responses
• Insight into how organisations and investors at the deep tech frontier are currently making decisions about technology bets