Posted: January 23rd, 2012 | Author: Ingeborg | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
After 4 weeks of preparation, it is going to start! For a mobile brand we go to 5 countries to run 10 co-creation sessions with over 80 young people from China, Indonesia, India, Nigeria & Mexico.
And so, at the tale end of the year of the rabbit, Martijn and I flew to Shanghai. The ‘opening’ co-creation sessions in mind. At the first team-meeting in Shanghai I looked around me and saw a team from all over the world: London, New York, Shanghai, Bejing and Amsterdam, all working hard to make this project a success!
After 4 days I’m back on the plane now. Tired, but like the characteristics of the new Chinese new years animal sign, I’m enthusiastic and proud. Because of our teamwork we have a successful first session behind us. And while the next teams are preparing themselves for the following countries- India & Indonesia- I am flying back to Amsterdam. For me the year of the dragon can start now!
Posted: November 23rd, 2011 | Author: martijn | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
The entire Fronteer management team – James and myself – has been on a great trip to California last week. One of the things we did was presenting at the bi-annual MCPC conference on Mass-customisation, Personalisation and Co-creation – chaired by Chesbrough and Piller amongst others. The event combines academic insights and business reality.
It was great meeting various people from across the industry, it is always refreshing to get many different viewpoints. A few of the most remarkable things I heard were:
- We are going towards a ‘co-creative’ organisation - Nick Coates from Promise (UK)
- Gamification can help choosing the best idea from hundreds - Johan Fueller from Hyve (GE)
- When a movie director co-creates with the crowd a better movie results - Nadine Escoffier from UCLA (US)
- We will spend 20% more when buying a BMW on-line when we are able to customise it ourselves - Frank Piller (GE)
- When given women the option to choose a personalised recovery program after having had breast-cancer, a better service at a lower price resulted - Benedict Dellaert from Erasmus University (NL)
- MyMuesli.com just built a mass-customisation factory. Wow
Enjoy the slides of our presentation. We presented the outcome of a small survey amongst 10 of our clients regarding the implementation of co-creation within their organisations. The results?
- Starting is easy
- Implementation is difficult
Who knew?
Posted: November 22nd, 2011 | Author: martijn | Filed under: brand development, Uncategorized | No Comments »
To keep up with the quickly changing consumer habits and needs, interface brands are emerging. These brands manage to offer people something old and slow-moving institutions are lacking: empathic, responsive and practical products and service. Interestingly these brands need the existing systems and technology – only they will add the cherry on the cake.
Two great examples are Simple and Giffgaff. Simple is a US based money management system, that closely works together with a few banks – which customers won’t see or know about. Giffgaff is a community-run mobile phone brand running on the O2 network.
Anyone needing a new interface?
Posted: November 10th, 2011 | Author: Joost | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
“How can we continue to provide our customers with an excellent airline experience?” Departing from this question, we have today started a three-day co-creation project for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, involving the best people from inside and outside the company using our expert co-creation methodology called Rooftop. Rooftop combines the strength and knowledge of highly skilled KLM-employees together with the different perspectives of a club of thoroughly selected external experts, thought leaders and game changers that derive from multiple industries. In a pressure cooker of – in this case – only three days, they are inspired to co-create an answer to KLM’s challenge.
After a plenary check-in, the first flight departed early this morning from our NxNW creative space. With our passengers working together all day in plenary sessions and break-out groups, our plane quickly broke the sound barrier and entered the innovation funnel, heading towards unknown destinations. The results? At the end of day 1, I can only tell that we’ve already made it to the place of new, clean-cut concepts that will provide KLM with clear directions – guiding them towards new heights of customer experience that haven’t been seen before. To be continued…
Posted: October 27th, 2011 | Author: Joost | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
On February 8th, 2012, the annual Dutch TWOTY Awards (Trendwatcher of the Year Awards) will be organized by trend watching agency Second Sight. The award winning companies and individuals will have proven to not only have the most realistic and visionary ideas on trends in 2012, but have also have the ability and knowledge to implement them. Now, we just got word that Fronteer Strategy has been nominated for the award of ‘Trend Implementation Agency of the year 2012′ – and we need your vote!
This is how it works:
> Navigate to the TWOTY Website;
> Here, you will find an overview of all agencies that have been awarded for the ‘Trend Implementation Agency of the Year 2012′-Award;
> Click the pink ‘Nomineer’-button
> Fill in the name of your favorite company (i.e. Fronteer Strategy), your motivation why, and complete it with your name and e-mail address;
> Hit the ‘Submit’-button and tell everyone you know!
CC: Picture from Nalden.net
Posted: October 24th, 2011 | Author: J A M E S | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Last week, a fact finding mission for our client DDFA took me to the exotic, hectic, fantastic, extreme wonderland of India’s capital city, New Delhi. It was an overwhelming experience from many perspectives. One of my objectives was to visit, scout and establish relations with the FDCI, organisers of the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week event. Due to the experience from my past job as Programme Director of Amsterdam’s Fashion Week, I had an interesting perspective on its development.
I was very impressed with the professional production of the event, the inspiring range of designers and their collections, but most of all with the exceptional quality of the garments.The shows by yound designer Nida Mahmood (inspired by Rajastani puppets, combining traditional Saris with jeans) and big names Rohit Gandhi &Rahul Khanna (who reminded us of Dutch top labels Iris van Herpen and Avelon) stood out for me. The craftsmanship and finishing of all the garments was incredible. I’d like to thank FDCI President Sunil Sethi and his team for their kind hospitality – and the honor of asking me to present the award for best Photographer. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: October 7th, 2011 | Author: Joost | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
One of the nicest things of working at the Fronteer, is that we quite often get to meet new, great and inspiring people; one of the more difficult ones is that we automatically also have to say goodbye sometimes. Last Friday, a day that happened to be one of the most beautiful days of summer in Amsterdam, we did both.
During our semi-annual Team Training Day (theme: ‘Trends and Service Design’), we were firstly joined by two new team members – our new interns Ingeborg and Charisma! Welcome on board! Furthermore Andrea Wiegman (founder of Second Sight) and Erik Roscam Abbing (Zilver innovation and writer of the book ‘Brand driven innovation’) dropped by to share their expertise on respectively trend watching and service design. Big thanks to you: we were left inspired and full of positive energy!
Unfortunately, after a great boat-trip through the Amsterdam canals, we also had to say goodbye to someone: Florine, who joined us last January, as one of our new associate consultants, preferred the idea of living the expat life in Singapore above living the Fronteer-life in Amsterdam, and took off. Luckily for us, she will be running our new Fronteer Strategy Singapore field office. As we say in Dutch: ‘Uit het oog, maar niet uit het hart’ – which in English means so much as: ‘We’re gonna miss you terribly’.
Flo, thanks for the honor of having you here, for your enthusiasm and your dedication – we wish you all the best starting things up in Singapore!
Posted: September 21st, 2011 | Author: Marieke | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
The ubiquitous American technology company Google has been voted most empathic brand of 2011, according to the Dutch audience. This is the result of the Empathy Monitor, an annual survey conducted by research Company Ruigrok | NetPanel and Fronteer Strategy. It tests 100 national and international brands in The Netherlands, spread over 15 categories. 2839 Dutch participants rated the brands on empathy, attractiveness and innovation.
Below the full press release (in Dutch). More information can be found on the Empathy Monitor website. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: September 16th, 2011 | Author: Nicole | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
One of the latest projects we’ve contributed to (in coop with IceMobile) has just gone live!
‘Philips AVENT launches a new, next generation version of the ‘My Baby & Me’ iPhone app which goes even further to meet the needs expressed by moms. The app offers a range of features to help moms keep track of their baby’s development and share their special baby moments with loved ones. Through the new 2.0 version, Philips AVENT allows moms to create a video of their baby’s special moments.’
During development, the My Baby & Me app was tested and refined through our online validation tool. We worked together with IceMobile, the Philips team and expert lead-users that were hand-picked across the globe, to validate and enrich the existing concept through online surveys, a digital co-creation platform and 1-on-1 skype conversations.
Check the full press release here or download the app directly here.
Posted: August 19th, 2011 | Author: Joost | Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
The streets of Great Britain are filled with riots and fire. A German-French coalition, somewhat affectionately referred to as ‘Merkozy’, attempts to render the shapes of a new, more advanced and economically flavored EU-era. At the same time in The Netherlands – along with many other countries – local and national politics and public opinion appear to be more polarized than ever before. I am not a huge fan of the word ‘momentum’, but this sure feels like what – I think – can be held a true ‘momentum’ in the making: people appear to be tired with their current governments, lack of influence and politics, and they want change. True change , that is – no more panem et circenses.
Read the rest of this entry »
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