What happens when an insurance company thinks like an engineering lab? And how does a deeper understanding of risk create opportunities for innovation rather than slowing it down?
In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Dr. Jaap De Vries, Staff Vice President and Principal Innovation Specialist at FM, to explore how one of the world’s leading commercial property insurers approaches innovation, risk management, and emerging technologies. From fire protection robotics and structural digital twins to AI-powered risk analysis, Jaap shares how his team is helping organizations anticipate challenges before they become costly problems.
Our conversation moves beyond insurance and into the broader role risk plays in every innovation journey. Jaap explains how FM’s engineering-led culture shapes decision-making, why understanding the science of risk builds customer trust, and how large-scale testing helps businesses identify threats they might otherwise miss. We also discuss the importance of storytelling when introducing new ideas and why data alone is rarely enough to drive adoption.
Along the way, Jaap reflects on his journey from aerospace engineering and combustion science into innovation leadership. He shares lessons from mentoring entrepreneurs, teaching technology commercialization at Brown University, and helping organizations balance technical expertise with the human side of persuasion. The discussion also touches on AI’s impact on work, the changing nature of entrepreneurship, and why future innovators may need to spend less time analyzing and more time building.
We explore some bigger questions. What is the greatest innovation of all time? Which innovation team from history would Jaap most like to have joined? And what kind of innovation does the world need most right now?
If you’ve ever wondered how innovation and risk management can work together to create stronger, more resilient businesses, this conversation offers plenty of insights. What role does risk play in your own approach to innovation, and are you paying enough attention to the opportunities hidden inside it?
Name: Dr. Jaap De Vries
Title: Staff Vice President and Principal Innovation Specialist
Company: FM
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Jaap de Vries, Ph.D. is a Staff Vice President and Principal Innovation Specialist at FM where he is responsible for discovering and developing new opportunities to guide the strategic planning efforts for the large commercial property-risk insurer and its mutual members. In his role, Jaap leads the commercialization of fire-protection robotic technologies, drives the development of confined-space-entry robotic solutions, and works on generative AI use case development. He actively collaborates with startups to create structural digital twins for large-asset monitoring and develops AI-based fire protection technologies, including computer vision for fire protection applications.
Jaap holds two patents related to smart fire protection and has developed Virtual Reality (VR) experiences to enhance fire protection training. His research primarily focused on fire and combustion science, multi-spectral infrared thermography, and computer vision, including expertise in spherical coordinates. He has led large-scale fire testing programs that have been published in several fire and combustion-related journals.
In addition to his work at FM, Jaap is an Adjunct Professor at Brown University School of Engineering, where he has been teaching Technology Entrepreneurship and commercialization as part of the master’s Program in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship (PRIME) since August 2022.
As a Startup Mentor at RIHub since June 2020, Jaap supports the infrastructure for Rhode Island’s business community by mentoring startups through RIHub’s Venture Mentoring Services (VMS), which utilizes the MIT Model for mentorship.