{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Syndicate One Podcast","title":"Brussels Wins, Belgium Wins: with Laurent Hublet, Brussels Minister for Employment, Economy, and Digital Economy","html":"<iframe width=\"100%\" height=\"180\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless src=\"https://share.transistor.fm/e/57c28f9b\"></iframe>","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1151,"description":"Laurent Hublet spent six years building BeCentral to fix Brussels' talent gap from the outside. Six weeks ago, Brussels called him to fix it from the inside.\nLaurent is now Brussels' Minister for Economy & Employment, three years into a mandate he had one hour to accept. He built BeCentral into one of Belgium's most-cited tech campuses, advised Alexander De Croo on Digital Belgium, and jumped from consultancy at Roland Berger straight into standing up a government with no team and no budget.\n🔹 Brussels wants its activity rate at 70% by 2030, up from 65%, and private investment is the lever.\n🔹 Cyber and AI are in his ministry's title on purpose: Brussels is a top-five global power center and the country's service hub.\n🔹 WAT, a new initiative from entrepreneur Thibault Elzière, is bringing international founders to Brussels.\n🔹 His flywheel argument: trust plus early wins compounds into collective success, the same logic BeCentral ran on, now at government scale.\n🔹 AI already runs parts of the employment office's back office. The actual policy choices stay human, on purpose.\nThe regions aren't competing for the same win. That's the whole point.","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/4XPJC_OlhpLAqf1cyr5lTzx0e48D4V69sVcOyf2o9AE/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9iYTNk/Yjk5YmUyNGRlY2Vi/ZjJlYTcyYTQyMGYz/MDFjZS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}