The Empathy Monitor 2010 – Results and Reactions

Fronteer Strategy and Ruigrok Netpanel have launched the Dutch Empathie Monitor – all results can be found on the website. It ranks major Dutch brands on perceived empathy, attractiveness, innovativeness and approachability levels. The research has been done with 1700 Dutch people 18+. Why have we done this? We believe empathy (the awareness and understanding of other people’s feelings and motives) will be one of the big business drivers of the future. All brand touchpoints are moments of truth, brand exposure, innovation opportunities and moments where you can show empathy. And – to our surprise – a Swedish brand has won. IKEA is leading the pack. In the top-3 we see Albert Heijn, the leading Dutch supermarket, and Bol.com, the little Dutch brother of Amazon.

We ate now almost a week after the launch and the reactions have been great. People have recognised the importance of empathy. Publications and debates online and lively Twitter exchanges are for us confirmations that empathy has value. Also, the monitor has been published on the ‘Ranking the Brands‘ site. The next step for us now is to help clients to understand empathy and what it means for their businesses. How do you drive empathy? How do you develop a touchpoints strategy? How can we innovate at all touchpoints? Those are questions we like to answer.

Feel free to contact us for more information.

10 Green Rules when it comes to sustainable strategies

Last month I had the great pleasure of presenting our vision on sustainability & co-creation at an event organised by Brand New Design – one of the leading packaging design agencies in The Netherlands. Brand New had gathered 101 inspiring examples of sustainable packaging from around the world. The 101 examples will travel Europe the coming months and hopefully will be available in a book later this year. Adformatie also covered the event (in Dutch). Here is the PDF.

We believe that the sustainability challenge is too big and too complex for anyone to tackle alone. There is no right or wrong, there are merely data points, opinions, visions and personal experiences. What is important then for any company or brand is to work together with experts, partners, suppliers and customers to find out how sustainability relates to their brand promise and business models.

The presentation that I gave is available on SlideShare. In it we make a case for co-creation being a method to create sustainable strategies. Our Rooftop Garden sustainable co-creation tool would be an example of that. Enjoy our presentation and please give us your feedback.

And for those of you who want instant satisfaction: read the rest of this entry for the 10 Green Rules

Read the rest of this entry »

There are 4 competitive Co-creation strategies. What’s yours?

If you want to know whether you can jump right into co-creation or whether you’d rather wait a bit: do our test. It is very simple. You basically have to answer two questions:

- Is my company, brand or organisation experienced in co-creation or any form of open innovation?

- Is my industry known to co-creation or any form of open innovation?

The results are below > What should you do? Read the rest of this entry »

10 Insights from a Cambridge Open Innovation seminar – and particularly from Unilever’s approach

Open Innovation is hot. Companies, organizations and practitioners all over the world are doing it or experimenting with it. At the Institute for Manufacturing in Cambridge some 20 people gathered for a one-day exchange of experiences and viewpoints. Open Innovation managers were present from amongst others Unilever, GlaxoSmithKline, Akzo Nobel, Premier Foods, BAT – as well as people from IfM and NESTA – the UK 100 man-strong innovation agency.

This is what I have learned: Read the rest of this entry »

Fronteer Presents: Co-creation Crash Course 2010

Fronteer Presents: An introduction to the theory and practice of co-creation in business

Co-creation is currently one of the hottest topics in innovation and management theory, but the benefits, risks, best practices and repercussions are less than clear to many managers.

Each session will include a presentation & discussion of a recent case by one of our clients and end with informal drinks, during which you will have the opportunity to share thoughts & experiences with colleagues from other companies & industries. Register now – a limited number of seats are available per session. Mail us at events@fronteerstrategy.com

When? March 24th & 31st or April 7th
What time? 12.30 – 18.00
Where: Amsterdam centre, The Netherlands
EUR 125,-            Download the flyer here

We definitely hope to see you there.

2010 – The Year of Empathy?

2009 Has been a great year. It was the year that we were able to support our clients in many different ways. Co-creation has been one of the major project pillars in 2009 and definitely something that we will continue to work on/with in the future. Our Co-creation’ 5 Guiding Principles white paper has been downloaded tens of thousands of times already. Expert co-creation has proven to be a tool for clients to tackle the toughest strategic challenges and work with the smartest people around.

What’s next? Empathy. We at Fronteer feel that brands that are interested in the world that they’re in and understand another’s situation, feelings, and motives are the ones that will thrive in the future. I was able to deliver a presentation in december 2009 in Amsterdam on empathy. What struck me was the honest and happy reactions of the people around. It seemed to be spot on. Also, our research on the relationship between open-ness of brands and attractiveness was an eye-opener to people (as it was for us last year).

So what will we do? We will focus part of this year’s efforts on developing our knowledge on empathy. Read the rest of this entry »

The Copenhagen Co-creation Manifesto

I have seldomly experienced such a rich event as the Copenhagen Co-creation summit a few weeks ago. The level of discussions and participants was fantastic. I needed weeks to digest all the information. I am back now. What was going on? The Danish Design Association had decided to take a bold step. Why not writing a Co-creation manifesto rather than beating around the bush all the time? Let’s nail it! But we didn’t. Of course not. When you have 30 people co-creating, the answer never comes immediately. It will take some time. Some more thinking. But: I was very happy with the definition my group came up with after the sessions:

- Co-creation unlocks collectivy creativity of people to create deeply relevant solutions -

It might sounds a bit dreamy, but so then the event was. We dreamt about a future world where co-creation would tap into the unlimited resource of collective global brainpower. New solutions would create far better worlds and would end the one-way consumption currently going on.

My conclusion after the event was: yes, co-creation is very difficult – and especially because of how organisations are structured right now – but it is a movement that cannot be stopped. There is no way back. We are all opening up and will refuse to close again.

Read the Manifesto and watch the great video.

The 1% rule in mass-customisation

I was quoted the other day in Dutch newspaper ‘De Pers’. I argued that the 1% principle (1% of each community is a ‘creator’) also holds for mass-customisation. Only the real affecionados are interested in tweaking and personalising their favourite products and brands. However, the generated buzz affects all consumers. The other 99%.

Here is what I said:

“Volgens merkenexpert Martijn Pater van Fronteer Strategy is de groep consumenten die ‘customizet’ relatief klein, maar gaat er een gigantisch marketingeffect van uit. ‘Wij hebben onderzoek gedaan naar het effect van personaliseren op het merk. Daaruit blijkt dat het merk er een open en toegankelijk imago van krijgt, als innovatief wordt gezien en daardoor populairder wordt. Het effect slaat dus over op het hele merk.’ Hij wijst op een slimme actie van Nike ID dat vorig jaar voor de wedstrijd Arsenal-Manchester United bezoekers van zijn website de schoenen van spelers als Wayne Rooney en Cesc Fabregas liet ontwerpen.”

Co-creation Dialogue Sessions in Los Angeles and Amsterdam

The last weeks we have been working on a project in Los Angeles and Amsterdam. The project aim was to find the right positioning of new products to be introduced by our client. Instead of creating products from scratch or building on client’s concepts – as we normally do in co-creation sessions – this time we needed to figure out the reason for being of a portfolio of products. Since such a task is not to be done with an average set of consumers, we recruited heavily on creative, outspoken, constructive, critical and passionate users of our client’s products. We found them. The differences between LA and Dutch consumers were abundent, but both worlds were not too far apart though. People from LA are VERY talkative though and like to share what they love (photo: Apple, Prius and Obama).

A few things I would like mention about Los Angeles’ and Amsterdam’ sessions:

- People feel truly honoured to be part of a strategic product development process
- When clients open up, consumers open up (we do not use one-way mirrors..)
- You get the best results when you invite the best people
- You need brand advocates and competitors’ fans in the mix
- Consumers can be far more passionate about a brand than clients could ever imagine…

These findings are in line with what we have experienced in recent other projects. We stick to our own rules: inspire, select, connect, share and continue.

How did P&G do it? Hear it from A.G. Lafley himself

If there is one company that leads the way in Open Innovation and co-creation it is P&G. It’s former CEO calls himself the Chief Innovation Officer, inspires its employees, sits in innovation reviews and even wrote a book about it. P&G tells people that many products have been ‘proudly developed elsewhere’ and sets its target to 50% for innovations coming from outside the P&G business units. Connect & Develop is their program and it has been running since 2002. I find this pretty OK.

Much has been written and said about P&G, but hearing it from the horse’s mouth is powerful. Watch the interview with Lafley here or read my exerpt below. Or do both. Read the rest of this entry »