Hilde Schuddinck

The through-line

Across her posts and appearances, Hilde Schuddinck keeps returning to one question: is the region and its economy actually preparing for what comes next, or just protecting what already exists. She frames this explicitly when launching a new podcast on the future of Gent and Oost-Vlaanderen: "Proberen te behouden wat er is, brengt je nooit de oplossing voor de toekomst" . That same forward-looking urgency runs through her practical work with startups and entrepreneurs , her organizing of international tech missions to benchmark Oost-Vlaanderen against the world's strongest ecosystems , and it sharpens into open alarm when she turns to how slowly Belgian policymakers are moving on AI ⁸⁹. Over the sources, the tone shifts from constructive regional strategy-building toward a more urgent warning that the country's leadership is falling behind the technology it needs to govern.

On the future of Oost-Vlaanderen

Schuddinck's flagship framing is HITT.2050 (Health, Industry, Technology Tomorrow), built on the historical lesson that Oost-Vlaanderen was "de armste van België" in the 1950s and became "een van de meest competitieve regio's van Europa" . Her question is not celebratory but forward-looking: "wat kunnen we daaruit leren voor de komende 25 jaar?" . This is paired with active benchmarking abroad: leading a Voka Oost-Vlaanderen tech mission to Paris, a city she ranks as Europe's strongest tech and innovation ecosystem "wereldwijd #4, na de Bay Area, New York en Boston" , visiting companies like Mistral, Alan, Founders Future, XAnge and STATION F to bring lessons back .

On supporting entrepreneurs

She puts direct effort into strengthening founders' financial fluency, running a three-session "StartUp Sprint" covering "financiële gezondheid en groei, KPI's, AI als slimme financiële collega en prijsstrategie," cashflow planning, and financing options . Her entrepreneur profiles ("Hilde op pad met…") celebrate hands-on, hard-working founders, describing Julie Dumoulin of Spotable as "een goedlachse maar vastberaden onderneemster" whose ambition matches the pace of her growth .

On Belgian policymakers and AI

Schuddinck's sharpest public position is that Belgium's top leadership badly misunderstands the technology it must regulate. She recounts that Prime Minister Bart De Wever, during a visit, had never heard of agentic AI and said outright "AI, dat ontgaat mij" ⁸⁹. Her conclusion is blunt: "Ik denk dat we in Vlaanderen en in België wel over alarmeren moeten spreken" ⁸. She points to concrete regulatory gaps, such as self-driving vehicles being unable to operate in Belgium for lack of a framework, and proposes ports as testing zones for autonomous trucks and logistics ⁸.

From the stage

On the Virtual podcast, Schuddinck goes further than her written posts by naming a specific institutional fix and its critics: Voka had floated a Dutch-style "special envoy" or AI minister role for Belgium, modeled on Prince Constantijn's cross-party tech strategy role in the Netherlands, even though Constantijn himself argued that needing such a role is itself a sign a government has failed on technology ⁸⁹. She also raises, live, the idea that proprietary health data could shift Belgian healthcare from reactive to preventive care and lower social security costs, but only if the financing model is fundamentally rethought ⁹, a policy-and-healthcare argument that does not appear in any of her written material.

Takeaways

• HITT.2050 frames the next 25 years for Oost-Vlaanderen around Health, Industry and Technology, grounded in the region's turnaround from being Belgium's poorest province in the 1950s .
• Startups can get concrete financial upskilling through Voka's StartUp Sprint, covering KPIs, AI as a financial tool, pricing strategy, and cashflow planning .
• Schuddinck leads Voka Oost-Vlaanderen missions to benchmark against top global ecosystems, visiting Mistral, Alan, Founders Future, XAnge and STATION F in Paris .
• She publicly warns that Belgium's Prime Minister had never heard of agentic AI, using it as evidence that policymakers are dangerously behind on technology ⁸⁹.
• She backs concrete regulatory fixes, such as using ports as testing zones for autonomous trucks, to close the gap that keeps self-driving vehicles off Belgian roads ⁸.
• On stage she raised a specific, unwritten policy idea: preventive healthcare enabled by proprietary health data could cut social security costs, but only with a rethought financing model ⁹.