Romy van Kessel
Manager
Romy is een energieke en creatieve consultant met een passie voor innovatie en maatschappelijke impact. Ze heeft ervaring opgedaan in sectoren zoals FMCG, media en luchtvaart, waar ze teams heeft begeleid bij het realiseren van innovatieve programma’s en het adviseren over nieuwe producten en diensten. Romy staat bekend om haar vermogen om plannen tot leven te brengen, altijd met oog voor de mensen met en voor wie ze werkt.
Deel dit artikel
The toughest problems are too big to solve in isolation, for even the world’s busiest airports. That was the central message Christopher Roos (Innovation Lead, Future of Baggage at Schiphol), Romy van Kessel, and Jos Werner of nlmtd brought to yesterday’s Create the Future event. Their session revealed a counterintuitive truth: the best collaborations don’t start with a shared vision. They start with a shared pain.
BOOST brought together Schiphol, Heathrow, Brussels, Incheon, and Avinor—not to chase an inspiring future, but to solve a crisis nobody wanted to admit: thousands of workers in physically damaging conditions, unfillable labor shortages, and outdated processes that couldn’t keep up with today’s high passenger demand.
The framework offered for coalition builders works in 3 phases:
FORMING: Build trust through transparency and site visits. “Collaboration is built on trust, and looking at other airports’ baggage halls really helps, ” Christopher Roos, emphasized. Critically, there were no vendor presentations for the first six months.
NORMING: Establish rhythm with regular check-ins as a simple evaluation lens: Product, Process, People. This 3-P framework helps evaluate every decision—forcing focus on workforce transformation, not just technology.
PERFORMING: From here go full speed. When 1 airport test something, everyone learns. When Schiphol tested loading robots, Avinor took the winner into live operations. When Brussels tested baggage AGVs, Schiphol used this input for fleet simulation. Failures and successes shared openly to prevent expensive mistakes from being repeated.
The coalition started with just 3 airports, built muscle memory, then scaled to 5 – and is now expanding with an Asia cluster too. With a layer of airlines, handlers and tech providers around to support the whole ecosystem.
The takeaway for innovation leaders? Most coalitions fail not because of technology or money, but because no one shares failures first. BOOST proved 5 simple principles work:
Start with a shared pain, not a shared vision.
Build trust before talking tech.
Establish rhythm before you scale.
Facilitate, don’t manage.
And embrace the friction-welcome the storm.
