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?

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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 »