How can violin players solve sustainability issues?

What makes a good co-creation expert? Let’s start with: when can you be called an expert? When you have a degree in a certain subject? Or when you devoted your whole life to another subject?

The Cambridge dictionary states it as follows:

expert noun /ˈek.spɜːt//-spɝːt/ [C]

a person with a high level of knowledge or skill; a specialist

And what about a co-creation expert? Being the Head of Experts at Fronteer Strategy, I like to add something to the above. Yes, a co-creation expert is someone with a high level of knowledge or a certain skill, but it also is someone who is creative, who likes to work with other people and share ideas. Someone who is passionate about his or her occupation, line of business, or just a certain topic in general. Or someone that can shine a different light on a certain subject. First and foremost, a co-creation expert likes to inspire and be inspired. And the expert is very good at what he does, and has a proven track record. Read the rest of this entry »

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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 »

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The Next Level in Opening Up

When we would have to choose a ‘perfect’ client, it would be one that has the same ambition that we have: being out there on the frontier, doing stuff others haven’t done before. I’m pleased to announce that we have found one: Nokia, already keen on co-creation, is going to stretch its boundaries when it comes to opening up to the public.

We are currently involved in a co-creation project organised around the Maemo Summit. Maemo – for those of you who are as software-illiterate as I am –  is an open source Read the rest of this entry »

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Douwe Egberts shows its ‘accessible-ness’ in a truly inspiring co-creation session

We love it when a plan comes together. We also love it when everybody is happy. And we love it when – again – the 5 principles of co-creation prove to be true.

Two weeks ago, I’d say a new standard was set for our Rooftop sessions when we held an expert co-creation session for Douwe Egberts. All the factors were accounted for: a very enthusiastic team from Douwe Egberts (a big thanks to all of you), a beautiful location (a new and very inspiring space in the portfolio of the Playing Circle) and, most importantly, an excellent team of experts (a big thanks to all of you, too) including fashion experts, trend analysts, product designers and marketing experts.

Douwe Egberts lived up to their recently acquired position of being one of the most accessible brands in the Netherlands. In the open atmosphere, everybody was eager to share their ideas, expertise and vision on the challenge at hand. The morning resulted in some very useful concepts, some of which I truly hope will be put into practice by Douwe Egberts. As for continuing development: one of the experts was so inspired that he actually started to work out some of the ideas (I’m very curious for those results) and Douwe Egberts is also in contact with another expert participant. A true feeling of co-creation, because lets face it: 99% of the best people do work outside of your company!

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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 »

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Select the Very Best – or how social are the Swedes really?

I recently enjoyed being part of a great conference in Malmö, Sweden, called Business to Buttons. It was organised by a company called Inuse. The congress was mostly on usability and interaction design. I was invited to talk about co-creation. Something else for a change I guess. It was very interesting, especially from a cultural perspective.

We at Fronteer talk about co-creation strategies all the time, and the 5 guiding principles of it. The second principle is ‘Select the Very Best’, meaning selecting the best people to co-create with (the 1%) or being able to select the best ideas from many. When presenting the principles in a workshop I was confronted with the 12-strong crowd feedback. They found the second principle shocking, undemocratic and radical. But also they found it being liberating and daring. I touched a nerve there. In the land of almost socialism, how could you exclude people? Not listening to the masses? Not weighing everyones opinion? Even in Sweden you can, believe me. Everybody likes to work with the smartest people.

This anecdote illustrates the impact of our rigid selection process when it comes to finding people to co-create with. We at Fronteer spend much time and effort on it and it’s essential to the success of our work. When our clients venture out in social networking (who doesn’t?) we find them the experts and entrepeneurs. When our clients want to dig into old artisan industries, we find them the people that understand the tension fiueld between old and new industries.

For any challenge there is a 1% to crack it.

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‘Innovating through the Crisis’

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 »

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Co-creation with nature

‘Life can offer 3.8 billion years of well-adapted technology, perhaps we can learn something from it’…

This quote stuck with me after listening to Dayna Baumeister, co-founder of the Biomimicry Guild. She spoke at the TU Delft Alumni Symposium yesterday where we attended her exciting lecture ‘Innovation, Inspired by Nature’.

And did nature inspire us!   Read the rest of this entry »

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