Many of our clients struggle with the same question : how to give valuable ideas the elbow room to develop properly; how to protect fledgling ideas from ‘short term’ budget and performance pressures.
What to do if they don’t ‘fit the mold’ or are harder to quantify? What if you need partnerships ‘with the outside’ to develop and monetize them? What if they seem strange but feel right? Read the rest of this entry »
Our initiative to set up a ‘leading platform for high-grade and sustainable denim/jeans’ made some ‘giant steps’ yesterday thanks to an Expert Cocreation workshop and a seminar at A’dam Fashion Week.
Well OK, maybe not the King, but the next best thing in any case…Mayor Job Cohen. Last Thursday night I received the IJ-prize (an award given to entrepreneurs for their contributions to the City of Amsterdam) from the Mayor at the amazing Hermitage.
It was an overwhelming experience: an hour’s worth of compliments, award from the mayor and then drinks with your family and best friends at the Hermitage, paid for by PWC! Seriously though it is an enormous honour to be listed with iconic Amsterdammers like Joop van den Ende, Geert Mak, Bob Pinedo, Ernst Veen, Jack Cohen, Rahma El Mouden and Maarten Frankenhuis, who have each in their own way changed the City for the better.
I’d like to thank the team at PriceWaterHouseCoopers, Mariette Hoitink for her wonderful speech and everyone else for their kind congratulations, it was really a very special evening indeed. I really appreciate everyone taking the time off to be there with me. For those of you that missed it, here’s a link to an item on AT5: http://www.amsterdaminc.tv/2009/11/20/veenhoff-wint-ij-prijs/ Read the rest of this entry »
Last Tuesday night, i had the pleasure of speaking to Shai Agassi, founder of the BetterPlace company, after a special lecture organised by Picnic and the Mayor of Amsterdam. I had naturally seen and loved his TED talk (those who haven’t… do!) about his BetterPlace initiative, but what struck me again was the clarity of his argumentation.
-He set out to solve ‘Peace in the Middle East’.
-He figured out that what Israel needs to do is end its dependency on oil
-The Arab nations need to modernize, which they will only do when their ‘magic’ and almost free oil billions stop flowing in.
So: his ambition became to bring the price of oil down to zero (by making it useless for cars) Read the rest of this entry »
Maemo - at the risk of stating the obvious -is Nokia’s Linux-based operating system, developed by a global community of open source programmers and enthusiasts. The Maemo community is independent from Nokia and is run by its own peer-elected council. All future high-end Nokia devices (Like the new N900 out soon) will run on Maemo, which means that users will be able to program, develop and share applications freely: a great perspective!
This weekend, the Maemo community organised its third annual conference at Amsterdam’s Westergasfabriek. Parallel to the ‘regular’ conference program, Fronteer Strategy was asked to develop a co-creative development process on the topic of ‘Creativity on the Move’.
One of our current projects combines just about all my professional fields of interest, as well as one of my strongest personal passions. I’m as surprised as anyone to find two of its main components to be ‘the City of Almere’ (a relatively new town to the right of Amsterdam) and ’sustainability’.
Due to my former role as program director of Amsterdam International Fashion Week, i’m regularly asked to take part in discussions on economic & regional policy, especially relating to the development of creative industries and fashion business. During one of such discussions with the ambitious Economic Affairs team from the City of Almere, we got talking about one of my favourite topics : Jeans. Read the rest of this entry »
Some time ago we took part in a conference called ‘The CoCreation Event’ held at the university of Eindhoven. Keynote speakers included Johan Sanders, innovation chief at Dutch Coffe brand Douwe Egberts and Martijn Staal of TNO, and I took part in a panel discussion about the question ‘Is Cocreation a Hype?’, which was fun.
Together with about 15 other co-creation specialists, we presented ourselves to around 500 attendants during a ‘market’-style mingle session, followed by break-out workshops. Rather than just talk about ourselves, we chose to ‘practice what we preach’ by spending both our time on the ‘market’ and in our break-out session on a cocreation topic.
We chose a topic close to any businessperson on the move: BNR Newsradio, the semi-quirky Dutch business & news radio station owned by the Dutch Financial Times. Read the rest of this entry »
Pretty Lady, winner Ann Boogaerts and Remco de Nijs of Gstar (from left to right)
11th edition of AIFW was great fun - Lichting 2009 was my highlight
Last week saw a very successful 11th edition of AIFW. Having been the programme director for editions 1 to 10, it was a ’strange delight’ to be a guest there for the first time. Part of the event’s success has always been working with a steady team of experienced professionals. Fortunately the team (Piet, Merle, Stephanie, Steven, Interns: good job!) continued this tradition, so the backstage security guys recognised me and didn’t give me any problems getting in.
I was happy to see the event running so smoothly (in fact i have to admit it runs a lot smoother now than it did when i was still around) and progressing; not only on the show schedule (with Badgley Mischka and Replay showing on the official schedule alongside local names blue blood, Claes Iversen, End and Lew) but also on the ‘talent development’ side. Pitch meetings with interested companies, masterclasses, buyer programs and workshops; a lot of effort is put into bridging the gap between ambition and business. Read the rest of this entry »
At Fronteer Strategy, Innovation and Brand Development are our two favourite topics, so we were very happy to be called this week by one of The Telegraaf’s senior business editors who was writing an article about the need for “A”-brands to innovate, ‘even’ in times of crisis. Here’s a summary of our point in English.
Many brands’ innovation programs are frozen like a deer in car headlights. The knee-jerk reaction of ‘putting your hand on your wallet’ (as we say in The Netherlands) is worsened by recent experience of mediocre-but-expensive innovation projects. Read the rest of this entry »
We are a management consulting firm based in Amsterdam. We specialise in Innovation, Brand Development & Co-creation. We explore the boundaries of companies and organisations. Find us at www.fronteerstrategy.com
Many of our clients struggle with the same question : how to give valuable ideas the elbow room to develop properly; how to protect fledgling ideas from ‘short term’ budget and performance pressures.
Making Plans
Well OK, maybe not the King, but the next best thing in any case…Mayor Job Cohen. Last Thursday night I received the IJ-prize (an award given to entrepreneurs for their contributions to the City of Amsterdam) from the Mayor at the amazing Hermitage.
Last Tuesday night, i had the pleasure of speaking to Shai Agassi, founder of the BetterPlace company, after a special lecture organised by Picnic and the Mayor of Amsterdam. I had naturally seen and loved his TED talk (those who haven’t… do!) about his BetterPlace initiative, but what struck me again was the clarity of his argumentation.
Standing on each-others’ shoulders
Love for Denim. And…Almere ?
Some time ago we took part in a conference called ‘The CoCreation Event’ held at the university of Eindhoven. Keynote speakers included Johan Sanders, innovation chief at Dutch Coffe brand Douwe Egberts and Martijn Staal of TNO, and I took part in a panel discussion about the question ‘Is Cocreation a Hype?’, which was fun.
At Fronteer Strategy, Innovation and Brand Development are our two favourite topics, so we were very happy to be called this week by one of The Telegraaf’s senior business editors who was writing an article about the need for “A”-brands to innovate, ‘even’ in times of crisis. Here’s a summary of our point in English.
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