Is empathy the new frontier in business?

On July 9^th we held a workshop on business empathy with 4 major Dutch companies, all leaders in their category: banking, supermarkets, rice and cable companies.

This workshop was part of the Dutch Empathy Monitor 2010, conducted by Ruigrok | Netpanel in cooperation with Fronteer Strategy. One of the interesting outcomes: there is a positive correlation between empathy and attractiveness.

But how can these four large brands be empathic while serving literally all Dutch consumers between the four of them? How can they understand all these 17 million consumers? The truth is, they can’t. But they can at least start trying.

These are some of the brand challenges that came up during the workshop:

- How can a commodity- or technical brand be empathic?
- Is empathy the reason why people still write us real letters?
- Should we deal with all the millions of expanding on-line touchpoints our brand has?

Read the rest of this entry »

House of Denim at Amsterdam Fashion Week

Making Plans

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. 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.

Shai Agassi and The Horse & Carriage 2.0

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 »

James Veenhoff winnaar IJ-prijs 2009

Amsterdam, 16 oktober 2009

Oprichter Amsterdam International Fashion Week en partner bij Fronteer Strategy wint ondernemersprijs

James Veenhoff winnaar IJ-prijs 2009

De jury van de IJ-prijs heeft vandaag bekend gemaakt dat de IJ-prijs 2009 gaat naar James Veenhoff. Veenhoff was jarenlang als directeur en medeoprichter de drijvende kracht achter de tweejaarlijkse Amsterdam International Fashion Week (AIFW). Veenhoff is nog steeds als bestuurslid verbonden aan de Amsterdamse modeweek. Volgens de jury heeft Amsterdam, dankzij de inzet van James Veenhoff, een internationale reputatie opgebouwd als modestad. De IJ-prijs is een initiatief van PricewaterhouseCoopers en de Gemeente Amsterdam en wordt jaarlijks toegekend aan een persoon die een duidelijke bijdrage levert aan de promotie en de economische ontwikkeling van Amsterdam. De IJ-prijs wordt traditiegetrouw overhandigd door de Burgemeester van Amsterdam, dit jaar op 19 november in De Hermitage in Amsterdam. Read the rest of this entry »

LOVE FOR DENIM

Love for Denim. And…Almere ?

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 »

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.

Creative Company Conference 2009 – Amsterdam

This week, I visited the Creative Company Conference in Amsterdam. A number of speakers was very interesting, including mister Amnon Levav of the Israeli firm Innovation SIT who spoke inspiringly about how innovation is often stimulated through challenges or discomfort, and usually found at the end of the path of MOST resistance. His analysis of structural, functional and relational ‘fixedness’ traps was a minor breakthrough to me.

The undisputed highlight of the day however was Sir Ken Robinson, who lectured about the importance of changing the way we look at education, chilling with Paul McCartney and his wife’s love of Elvis. I intend to read his new book “The Element” soon.

All in all, the event was fun, and I left inspired. I feel that in this day & age however, a conference like this should have wi-fi. Interestingly, there were rumors of a TedX event to be organised in Amsterdam soon. Let’s hope we can get a program together that deserves the ‘accolades of Ted-ness’.

I Love it when a plan comes together

DUTCH CREATIVE (AND) INDUSTRY LEADERS RUB SHOULDERS AT AMSTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FASHION WEEK

This week sees the 10th edition of AIFW – a platform to put Amsterdam on the fashion map, launched (almost) exactly 5 year ago. The official show schedule starts tomorrow night with the Fortis Opening Soiree, but a number of ambitious young designers make use of ‘empty’ slots in the schedule by showing ‘guerilla-style’. Tonight, Antoine Peters showed his AW09 collection, titled “I’m With Stupid”. Read the rest of this entry »