Joris van Dijk

Managing Director at Madurodam

My experience and deep interests:

• Culture

• Education (Youth)

• Strategy

I am based in: Den Haag

From my initial conviction “I achieve therefore I am’ in the last few years I’ve evolved to finding satisfaction in “the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort”. Achieving a meaningful result together with the teams I work with is what drives me. And obviously creativity is where logic and magic meet and interesting things start happening.

I like to set things in motion. And I love “simplicity at the end of complexity”: to develop ideas that people instantly recognize and make them wonder… “hasn’t this been here forever?”. In my tenure at the National Lottery the introduction of a fixed draw date (“every 10^th of the month”) and a stupid simple monthly countdown campaign (“2 days to buy your ticket”) is an example of such an idea (and it earned the lottery a lot of money).

And in a completely different field:  the introduction of a “National Children Commemoration Day” on the 4^th of May at Madurodam is another example of an idea that people instantly recognized as obvious. It brings the story of freedom to children in an understandable way and at the same time revives the war-memorial function of the park.

My current endeavor is to redevelop the educational function of Madurodam and to establish the “University of Madurodam”. Since inception in 1952 Madurodam attracted over 60 million visitors and is known as the world''s smallest city. Now it’s time to put children on the helm and invite them to create the city of the future.

I believe in mens sana in corpore sano. I run 2-3 times a week along our beautiful coastline (and have an under-used gym membership). I’m a curious and avid reader (target: 2 books/month) and love to travel the world sometimes alone but preferably with my wife and three children.