Business Model Workshop

Monday April 26 was an exciting day for us. It was the first time we put our philosophy of co-creation into practice. During this day we worked on the Zoku business model together with 17 people from different industries: travel and hospitality, banking, (expat) hr management, IT, sales, design and real estate. Our target audience was represented by a true global nomad who worked in 35 (!) different countries over the last five years. Patrick van der Pijl and Camilla van den Boom, who both work for Business Models Inc., facilitated the workshop. Patrick is one of the co-authors of Business Model Generation, a best-selling management book that we like (and even understand ).

Patrick and Camilla did a great job facilitating this energizing day, on which a lot of valuable ideas where created. The good thing about co-creation is that we received lots of positive feedback from the participants, also because it was a pressure cooker course in business model generation for them. And we were extremely pleased by so much enthusiastic feedback on the concept itself.

I would like to thank all the participants for joining us on our journey to create a new hotel concept (a small revolution), their input and for freeing up their agenda for this day. Please have a look on our webpage ‘Thank You‘ to see who participated and/or who have helped us in the different stages of the project.

The New World of Work:

This is an interesting video to watch if you’re interested in the New World of Work. I particularly like Thomas Friedman’s statement: “It has become possible for more people to collaborate and compete in real time, with more other people on more different kinds of work from more different corners of the planet, on a more equal footing than any previous time in the history of the world”. Think about the enormous potential which is unfolding….

Talking to the market:

To activate co–creation we discovered that networking days are a good opportunity. It started three weeks ago when we were invited by THIS (The Hague International Spirit) to join a seminar about housing problems in the area of The Hague, which Oscar attended. This is an organisation which has a mission to build an active business relationship between the locals and internationals and to show what opportunities the international community brings.  This should result in a better environment for both.  During this event several topics were covered like the short-stay housing market. The conclusion of the day was that the costs of housing are too high, the service level too low and that the internationals find it hard to make new friends. Oscar introduced the concept to several participants of the seminar and only received very positive feedback. Reactions included: Kevin Cullen from the International Criminal Tribunal Yugoslavia and the relocation officer at the EPO (European Patent Office), two big organisations with together more than 5000 internationals.

The second networking day was on April 19 and from the AABC (American Amsterdam Business Club). Kira Nijenhuis is the owner of Cosmo Polite, a company that organizes social gatherings for expatriates and she invited Oscar for this event.  Here he met several other companies who offer services and products for expatriates. Oscar talked to some relocation agencies who confirmed the problems with housing for short term assignments. Also, Bill Sharo from Uniglobe Alliance Travel is very interested in the concept and already gave us some good ideas (thanks Bill!).

The day after, there was a second meeting from THIS, where Oscar met some other interesting people. An HR executive at Shell is impressed by the concept proposition and the extensive services we are planning to deliver. Although they do have their own housing for short term, the concept appealed to him and he will have a look within Shell for the possibilities. Jeroen Doting, Sales Director Netherlands of ‘The Team Group’, one of the worlds largest international moving and relocation companies sees the concept as a unique addition to the already extended services they deliver within the company and mentioned a possible collaboration later on.

Working with the Club van Delft:

After Christmas I worked for two weeks on a functional design for a new type of apartment : a home-away-from-home and an office-away-from-the-office merged into one comfortable space. Early January, we organized a brainstorm session with the “Club van Delft” to evaluate this functional design. The “Club van Delft” is a network of students of the TU Delft (technical university) with various backgrounds e.g. architecture, interior design, industrial design, aerospace engineering etc. etc. The workshop was organised in Delft, Oscar (HotelsAhead’s Zokulogist) being present there and I was participating from the lobby of the Faena Hotel (nice place!) in Buenos Aires. They facilitated a highly professional day and the outcome was a strong confirmation of our ideas at that time. Some ideas which were brought up by the Club van Delft are still under investigation. Check their website if you’re interested.

My-office-away-from-the-office:

The nice thing about this concept for the global nomadic tribe is that this concept has been created in various parts of the world. Two times per year I try to live & work in another place for 4-6 weeks. Last May/June it was Bali and last December/January I stayed with my girlfriend and my little boy for 6 weeks in Argentina and Uruguay. The exciting part is that I am able to continue with all my activities although the majority of my projects are based in the Netherlands. Thanks to the internet.

Design Competition:

Last week we’ve started with a competition between three design agencies in order to help us visualize the Zoku concept and to create a preliminary interior design based on an extensive briefing and a functional study, executed earlier this year. In May all of them will present their ideas, sketches, thoughts, images and I see it as a privilege that all of them said “yes” to this competition. So we’ve some exciting time ahead of us.

Zoku’s value proposition:

Our main objective is to develop Zoku in a place where you would love to stay. We think that we should do two things: creating value and lowering costs. Blue Ocean Strategy is a great tool that I can recommend to everybody when defining your companies’ strategy. Specifically the “eliminate-reduce-raise-create” grid (also called the “four actions framework”) is very helpful as it pushes us into the direction of offering “more for less” and it’s so simple to use. Due to all the interviews we did over the last few weeks with prospective guests, travel managers and (expat) hr managers we continuously find new ways of better addressing existing opportunities. So we’ve used the four actions framework in the past and we will use it again this afternoon to refine Zoku. And we’ll keep on refining in order to achieve our objective mentioned in the first line. If you want to know more about Blue Ocean strategy, have a look at this presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/pageman/blue-ocean-strategy-86147

Thanks to you all for your kind and valuable input so far!