Marcel Prins

Prof. dr. Marcel Prins is currently Vice President (Crop) R&D and Innovation at the Wageningen-based agbiotech company KeyGene. Marcel has a strong background in the life sciences, originally from a content point of view especially in plant pathology and reproduction biology. Throughout his professional career he has managed innovation processes.  He has run various projects, was responsible for human resources and general stakeholder management.  Marcel has also been head of laboratory in a biotech startup that produced pharmaceutical proteins in plants.

Marcel enjoys the process of taking an innovative idea beyond the ideation, from the intellectual property protection and prototype phases towards the creation of value within all segments of the chain.

Marcel has an MSc molecular sciences and a PhD in plant virology (1997) from Wageningen University & Research, and also studied at Nyenrode (2008) and INSEAD (2017). Since 2013 he is part time affiliate professor of applied plant virology at the University of Amsterdam.

Skills and field of expertise

  • Innovation strategy
  • Innovation operational management
  • IP strategy
  • Customer relation building
  • Life science expertise
  • Contract Management
  • HRM of innovative professionals
  • Knowledge transfer and valorization

Offer

I offer 25+ years of innovation experience, process and people management. I know what it is like to run a high tech / biotech company and how to make innovation happen: from ideas to market.

Interest

The people in a start-up make the difference. An ambitious team with a good proposition can move mountains. Early and later (scale-up) companies have my interest. Technology driven, with a clear biological compound, but also generic enabling technologies.

Favorite quote

An ambitious team with a good proposition can move mountains.

Marcel Prins