Why us

The main five reasons why you should hire us:

  1. Massive impact. You will speed up innovation simultaneously in three – to five national subsidiaries and markets. Your local teams will better understand local market needs and create bespoke solutions matching local culture and market needs.
  2. Local experience. Our experienced innovation facilitators will guide your local people in their own language (or English) and in a way that fits local culture.
  3. Scale. We can scale a MULTIFORTH innovation project in three – five, or even ten, countries or subsidiaries simultaneously when needed.
  4. Proven. Scientific research shows that our proven FORTH methodology doubles the effectiveness rate of your current innovation process.
  5. Culture change. Your team members and senior leaders learn the innovative mindsets and skills required, thus starting a culture for innovation.
  6. Thought-leading. Thinkers360 has acknowledged the FORTH Innovation Institute as one of the top 50 thought-leading companies in innovation for 2022.
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22 FREQUENT ASKED QUESTIONS ON (MULTI)FORTH

Click the questions down below.

ON INNOVATION

Innovation creates opportunities for the growth of your sales and profits and the development of your people’s skills and competences to do the same again. When your markets change you should innovate your offerings to continue playing a leading role.

The innovation facilitator leads the FORTH process. S/he leads each of the fifteen workshops and activities which will be executed by a team of people from your own organisation. The innovation team will be lead by a project leader, and a sponsor from your own organisation.

A consultant innovates for your organisation creating ideas and new business cases for you. A facilitator leads the FORTH innovation process whereby your FORTH team creates ideas and new business cases themselves. A FORTH facilitator ensures the buy-in of your people for their ideas.

ON FORTH

FORTH is a proven methodology to start innovation combining design thinking and business thinking. In a structured process of five months a team of your own people creates five new business cases for an innovation assignment, created by you to meet your commercial needs, and with explicit senior leadership support.

FORTH delivers:

  • Three to five new business cases per country, each realizing the criteria from the innovation
    assignment.
  • The new business cases are delivered within five months after the start of the FORTH projects.
  • A global alignment of your innovation efforts on local market needs by bespoke new solutions
  • Innovative mindsets and skills for all the innovation team members involved, and the senior leaders, so
    they can re-apply what they’ve learnt – kick-starting a culture for innovation.

FORTH was founded in 2006 by Gijs van Wulfen, a Dutch authority on innovation. He is a LinkedIn Influencer with 300.000+ followers and his written six books on innovation. His company, Van Wulfen Innovation IKE, is the official owner of the FORTH brand and Institute.

FORTH increases the effectiveness of your innovation stage-gate process by combining design thinking and business thinking. It connects customers throughout the process and delivers business cases in five months. With FORTH, Independent scientific research shows that three out of four business cases are launched to market, compared to one out of three in a regular stage-gate process. FORTH more than doubles the odds of success.

FORTH has been appied by big organisations in BtB and BtC markets for products and services, like Philip Morris, HUNTSMAN, NEC, NTT DATA, WÄRTSILÄ and the United Nations. In 2016 a FORTH project innovating refugee camps in Africa won the UN’s internal innovation excellence award.

FORTH has been applied on all continents all over the world. And the FORTH methodology book is available in eight languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Dutch and Hungarian.

That’s why we have separate workshops we all plan in advance. It requires 1.5 days/week for each core team member.

ON MULTIFORTH

Of course you can start a multinational FORTH project. The advantage of three to five simultaneous local FORTH projects is two-fold. The first reason is massive impact. You will speed up innovation simultaneously in three – to five national subsidiaries and markets. The second reason is that local FORTH teams will better understand local market needs and are able to create bespoke solutions matching local culture and market needs, instead of “one corporate-concept that fits all”.

Let’s invite them to an innovation workshop to explain the process and to define a joint innovation assignment, a
concrete statement reflecting your innovation needs and criteria. We can facilitate this very effectively also online
and will do it ‘free of charge’.

Since 2006 we have facilitated more than two hundred FORTH projects, generating more than five hundred new
business cases worldwide.

ON RISKS AND SUCCESS

FORTH is a proven innovation methodology. We guarantee success. And you know that doing nothing is a bigger risk for your organisation.

We guarantee success from applying FORTH in your organisation based on the following five factors:

  • 1. It is strategy-driven based on a clear, bespoke innovation assignment defined by you at the start.
  • 2. It combines design thinking and business thinking in a structured way.
  • 3. It connects with your customers throughout, identifying their needs and testing if the concepts are attractive.
  • 4. It is quick: delivering new business cases (not vague ideas) in five months.
  • 5. Your own team will generate great buy-in and energy to transform the business cases into reality.

Our FORTH institute continually learns from our own experiences, and we understand the conditions that optimise success. Considering the outcome of business cases approved for implementation, we know that FORTH out-performs other methodologies. We have generated more than five hundred new business cases worldwide and we guarantee the success of FORTH in your organisation provided we get priority, great local teams and your personal commitment to join the FORTH expedition yourselves.

In the innovation assignment we define your criteria for innovation success that each of the new business cases must fulfill. We would love to bring you into contact with former FORTH users at senior management level of Philip Morris, Wartsila, Huntsman or NEC so you can have a personal conversation on the success factors of FORTH.

The FORTH innovation methodology connects design thinking with business thinking at the start of your stage- gate process. Starting your stage-gate process with FORTH has been shown to double the output of your funnel.

FORTH provides a proven process to unlock the innovation potential of your own people. Being part of a FORTH expedition turns R&D people, engineers, marketeers, business designers, value chain experts and sales people into all-round innovators, helping them learn new skills and competences they can apply again and again.

Yes, you will get 15 to 25 new business cases from three to five FORTH innovation projects, which fit your strategy, have great local buy-in and will generate your profits of tomorrow.

The big difference is that we do not deliver you ready-made new solutions that may or may not fit your organisation. We empower your own people, who have the expertise and solutions in mind, leading them in a structured process to become amazing innovators themselves.

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