Rotterdam, South Holland, Netherlands
Sustainable development is what drives the work I do. Whether it is sustainable engineering, marketing or business development, I believe in the new and brave companies that are re-shaping today world. I have been part of the founding team of Fairphone as a social enterprise. Since 2012, when we started the incubation process I have taken care of many different fronts. My background in Product Design Engineering & Strategy combined with my intensification in Technologies for Sustainable Development give me the flexibility to deal with topics at different stages of the product lifecycle. At a strategic level, I like to focus in the fuzzy front-end (What type of product we should develop? For who?) and at the very end when such a product needs to be introduced in the market. At an operational level, I have in the past managed Industrial Design consultants for Fairphone 2, done work on Supplier Selection and managed parts of the launch like packaging and our retail presence. At Fairphone we use each step of the lifecycle as a tool to propose and test new models that elicit different (business) models for improved environmental and social sustainability.
Looking into the market acceptance of fair electronics and the prospective market segment for Fairphone
Applying our supplier fair trade policy, I took care to find a producer for our product and assist in the process of the production. Making prototypes and thinking along redesigning to help our producer towards a more smooth process.
In a 5 months project, we designed a system for collecting information from consumers at rural sites in India. 2 months of the project were spent in India doing context mapping.
I run creative sessions during the period of 5 months to spot hindrances to the development of the organizations. Reported back as an advice on how to implement the new five years vision.