Welcome to the Spring ’12 edition of ‘News from the Fronteer’, our more-or-less regular newsletter.

In this issue you can read all about our latest travels, successful co-created product, a very fashionable client, a charity event to remember, our latest whitepaper and more! 

Enjoy the read!

It’s always great when work brings you to interesting places that you’ve longed to visit for a long time. These past months, projects involving baby strollers, coffee and mobile phones have led us to New York, Shanghai, Mumbai, Lagos, Mexico City, Munich and Jakarta.

It’s fascinating to learn how products have different meanings, usage and operational context in different parts of the world; a great opportunity to put our anthropology and design thinking backgrounds to work. But also our recruiting skills, because as always co-creation only works when you select the best. 

Our network once again did the trick and found the most interesting participants, ranging from the young and ambitious Mexican students, who try to make the of their freedom, to streetwise Nigerian entrepreneurs with no boundaries when it comes to giving feedback.

It's great to have our global network grow like this, to work together with local client-teams, to meet interesting participants on the way, and lets be honest: bagging some air miles while doing it! And it doesn't end here, next stops will be Thailand, India, Egypt and Marocco!

 

Remaining on the topic of airline travel, you will have had a hard time missing our most recent project for Royal Dutch Airlines KLM. The Meet & Seat concept has caused intense online turbulence, featuring in editorials from The Economist to the New York Times and almost a million other postings online.

The idea, developed in a ‘Rooftop’ expert co-creation workshop involving hotelliers, railway marketeers, restaurant owners, magazine editors and frequent flyers, is refreshingly simple: when you check in and select your seat, add your LinkedIn or Facebook profile and actually choose next to whom you sit. Why should you leave your travel companion up to fate or random? This way, fellow entrepreneurs, seminar attendants or parents with children can select each other’s company.

The successful pilot programme has recently been extended to include a wide range of destinations to and from Amsterdam. Full marks to the KLM team for pushing this innovation through and making it happen: a truly differentiating and valuable use of social media.

 

It’s always great to be on the guest list. But it’s especially fun when the event in question is the launch of the Dutch edition of  fashion bible Vogue.

We were especially excited because we had the honour of being part of the team that developed the introduction & launch strategy. How to introduce a magazine that needs no introduction? An inspiring challenge indeed.

Working closely with the editorial team, we experienced first-hand how much effort, talent, personality & perseverance go into launching a new member of the ‘Queen of Fashion Magazines’ family. We congratulate them on their phenomenal success and look forward to many inspiring features.

 

Traditionally our focus has been on the development of fresh strategic concepts for the mid-term. However, over the course of the past year - possibly due to the challenging economic climate - we’ve seen our clients become more concerned about the shorter-term future too.

As well as ‘filling the funnel’, we’ve become involved more often in the validation and enrichment of existing concepts. This prompted us to develop a new methodology, applying the principles of co-creation to this ‘later’ stage of innovation. Since it’s goal is to ‘take a concept to the next level’, we called it ‘Elevator’. Read more about Elevator and case examples here.

 

‘Sharing’ is one of the building blocks of open innovation. That’s why Fronteer has a solid tradition of publishing whitepapers about the theories and principles that underly our work.

Previous topics included 'Co-creation's 5 Guiding Principles', ‘Co-create your sustainability strategy’, and ‘9 Ways to get your team ready for Co-creation’.

This month, we proudly present Fronteer Whitepaper #4: 'Getting the Best People for Co-creation'. Written by our Expert Connector Nadine Levin and managing partner Martijn Pater, it dives deeper into the topics of ‘expert team composition’, 'where to find the best' and ‘why experts take part’.
An interesting read for anyone involved in co-creation.

 

Great news from the Home Front: our ‘creative space’ NxNW (North by North-West) is hosting more and more sessions from clients, neighboring companies and perfect strangers - exactly as intended.

Recent additions to our set-up include a Sonos audio system (if you don’t know this system you simply MUST check it out at Sonos.com), clocks from our friends at LEFF Amsterdam and chairs from Dutch designer brand Flux.

Check out some images of NxNW here and feel free to drop by or contact Leonie & Louise at the Fronteer office if you’re interested.

 

On the team front, we’re delighted to announce a new addition to our consulting corps. Ingeborg Lübbers was snapped from the jaws of the advertising industry and is now a full member of the Fronteer Strategy team.

She has a background in social science and spends part of her free time as... a wedding singer. 
Ingeborg's bumping up the food chain also means that there's a new opportunity for young talent: we're looking for a new intern! Read all about it here - and be sure to tell a friend.

We are also looking to strengthen our team with a junior-level 'Expert Connector'. Do you enjoy hanging around on Facebook all day? Are you a natural peoples-person, always introducing people to each other? Do people call you all the time with odd questions? Then this might be a great opportunity for you. Please check out the profile here.

 

Sitting still is not one of our strong points: when something is worthwhile, we usually enjoy getting involved. Since we spend a lot of time on these ‘extra-curricular’ ventures, we thought we’d share some of the related inspiration in our newsletter.

A very recent highlight was Emma’s Amazing Fun Raising Night; a charity event to raise funds for the Emma Children’s Hospital of which our Partner James is the chairman. Together with a team of other local young-parent-entrepreneurs and brand activation agency Hadimassa, the second ‘Embrace Emma’ event was organised last month. We are proud to announce that the event raised Eur 411.000,- towards our ambitious goal of two million euros - and probably equally proud that it was such an amazingly fun night. Thanks to everyone involved!

 

A new item in our newsletter is the 'Expert Quote of the Month'. During our co-creation sessions, many smart, fun and clever things are said, some of which are just too good to keep to ourselves. 

This quote comes from one of our coffee experts during one of our sessions in Munich. We love it because it's true... 

Stay tuned for our next newsletter, which will include the Fs 'Workbench', the long-awaited 5th Whitepaper about our 5 A's model, our very own Energy Company and 'things going on in Amsterdam'…

Until then, save us form buying 'likes' by hitting our button on Facebook.