Gerbrand (1956)  is generalist in the area of industrial product design with over thirty years of experience. One of his missions is to research and highlight the meaning of design. He is active within a number of organizations, some of them even founder, including Designlink the Dutch Design Management Network (DMN) and the Federation Dutch Creative Industries, the umbrella organization of the creative business service providers in the Netherlands. Gerbrand is also a member of the supervisory board of CRISP, a big project that investigates product service systems for the creative industries. CRISP wants to develop knowledge, tools and methods that stimulate the knowledge infrastructure of the design sector and creative industries. Together with the Federation he currently develops the concept of creative innovation and knowledge co-operatives (KIC). KIC will facilitate the cooperation between knowledge and educational institutes, public organizations en creative businesses in a business case. Design service provider Yard 9 is a cooperative to this model and is operating in Turkey for over four years.