Stepping out of Eindhoven's central station, the "PHILIPS" sign atop an old factory rooftop across the street filled the view. Though Philips left long ago, the sign remaining in the middle of the city clearly showed who once ran this place. What had changed was what stood beneath the sign. The factory buildings that once operated for a single company were now filled floor by floor with schools, research institutes, startups, and advanced technology companies.
Philips, which began producing incandescent light bulbs in Eindhoven in 1891, supplied not only jobs but also housing, schools, and hospitals. Eindhoven was, in effect, a city fed by Philips alone. Factories and research institutes were located in the city center, and the city's growth moved in step with Philips' expansion.
The crisis came as Philips began to falter. The low-price, high-quality offensive from Japanese electronics companies combined with a technology-focused management approach that strayed from market demand, and Philips posted a loss of 2.3 billion dollars in 1990 alone. Large factories closed and more than 20% of the entire workforce lost their jobs. When even the headquarters moved to Amsterdam in 1998, the city was left with the task of "what to fill the space Philips left behind."
Eindhoven did not immediately build shops and apartments. First, it opened the abandoned factories to creators to give people a reason to visit. The central stage was Strijp-S, Philips' old production and research complex. When Philips sold the 270,000-square-meter site in 2002, the city and private sector each invested 50% to establish the special-purpose company "Park Strijp Beheer." This company took charge of developing and managing the site and is carrying out a five-phase long-term development through 2028.
The first step was not high-profit residential and commercial facilities. "Klokgebouw," which had been Philips' filter factory, was opened as affordable studios and music studios for young artists. As creators moved in, Dutch Design Week and media art and tech festivals followed. As design, technology, and youth culture were layered onto the gray factory district, the image of a place that had symbolized decline changed.
As the flow of people changed, companies moved too. As visitors increased and designers and developers began to stay, startups and small and medium-sized enterprises seeking to collaborate with them moved in. Later, mid-sized companies and research institutions joined as well. Culture did not replace industry but became the priming water that drew companies and jobs.
At Sint Lucas, a specialized school for creativity and technology found inside Strijp-S on the 22nd of last month, students were carrying out design and technology projects with officials from nearby companies. Because the school and company offices are in the same complex, ideas born in class lead directly to the development of company products and services.
This place has already served as a growth ladder for new companies. The former Philips machine factory building became the early growth ground for ASML, and Bosch also moved in here in the early days of relocating its headquarters. Currently more than 1,000 companies have established themselves in Strijp-S, including more than 250 startups and scale-ups alone. Meanwhile, parks, schools, studios, and residential space for about 2,250 households have also been created in stages.
The rental income generated from the once-empty factories was reinvested into housing, education, transportation, and public facilities. It is a structure that raises the value of a place by attracting people and puts the profits secured through corporate tenancy back into the region. Unlike the past, which depended on Philips alone, an ecosystem was created in which multiple companies and educational and research institutions grow by exchanging talent and technology with one another.
The results spread beyond Strijp-S as well. Eindhoven's population, which was 198,339 in 1998 when Philips headquarters left, grew about 26% to 249,035 in 2025. Jobs in the Brainport region, which includes Eindhoven, increased 20.5% over the past decade, and jobs in the high-tech systems and materials industry rose 45.9% since 2012 to reach 89,058 in 2024. Regional gross domestic product also grew 61.3% from 2012 to 2022, exceeding the Netherlands' overall growth rate of 46.8%. An environment favorable for startups made Eindhoven a central city of innovation. Advanced technology companies have settled in this city, including Axelera AI, valued at more than 1 billion dollars and eagerly invested in by BlackRock and Samsung Electronics, as well as Sendcloud, a logistics software company used by some 30,000 companies, and EFFECT Photonics, an optical communications deep-tech company.
Behind this change was a "triple helix" in which local government, companies, and universities divided their roles. The city opened regulations and space, the private sector took charge of investment and commercialization, and universities supplied technology and talent. It allowed mixed use so that residential, commercial, and cultural facilities could be built together in Strijp-S, and opened the entire site as a "living lab" so that startups could test new technologies.
About six years ago, it grouped 15 officials in charge of transportation, housing, industrial economy, and infrastructure into a single team, eliminating silos between departments. The preparation period for the express bus project connecting the central station and Strijp-S was reduced from an initial six to seven years to about four years, a result of this organization coordinating differences among agencies in one place. Frank van Zwol, head of Eindhoven's central station district and MIRT program, said, "The city cannot have all the answers," adding, "When difficult problems arise, companies and universities find solutions together."
