Romy van Kessel
Manager
Romy is an energetic and creative consultant with a strong passion for innovation and social impact. She has gained experience across industries including FMCG, media, and aerospace, where she has guided teams in delivering innovative programs and advising on new products and services. Romy is known for her ability to bring plans to life, always with close attention to the people she works with and for.
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The toughest problems are simply too big to solve in isolation, even for the world’s busiest airports. That was the key message from Christopher Roos, Innovation Lead for the Future of Baggage at Schiphol, together with Romy van Kessel and Jos Werner of nlmtd, at yesterday’s Create the Future event. Their session revealed a counterintuitive truth: the strongest collaborations begin not with a shared vision, but with a shared pain.
The framework for building coalitions unfolds across three distinct phases:
FORMING: Build trust through transparency and site visits. “Collaboration is based on trust, and seeing baggage halls at other airports helps tremendously,” Christopher Roos emphasized. A crucial detail: during the first six months, there were no vendor presentations.
NORMING: Create momentum through regular check-ins and apply a simple evaluation framework: Product, Process, People. This 3P model guides every decision and keeps the focus on workforce transformation, not technology alone.
PERFORMING: From this point on, go full throttle. When one airport tests something, everyone learns. When Schiphol piloted loading robots, Avinor quickly adopted the winning solution. When Brussels tested baggage AGVs, Schiphol used those insights for flight simulations. Successes and failures alike are shared openly, ensuring costly mistakes are not repeated.
The coalition began with just three airports, built experience, and then scaled to five. It is now expanding to include an Asian cluster. Surrounding it is a broader ecosystem of airlines, handlers, and technology partners that support the collaboration.
The most important lesson for innovation leaders? Most coalitions fail not because of technology or funding, but because no one is willing to share failures first. BOOST proved that five simple principles work: start with a shared pain, not a shared vision. Build trust before discussing technology. Create rhythm before scaling up. Facilitate rather than manage. And embrace the friction. Welcome the storm.
