Arno Nijhof
Director
I like to build things such as ecosystems, teams, and programs. At TNW, I have been promoted from the ground up, and TNW Programs has grown into an international operating innovation and ecosystem studio. As part of the management team at TNW, I work on strategic growth and impact with a team of driven people. I get energy from working together, pioneering, and seeing the development of ideas and people.
Share this article
In January, TNW Programs joined nlmtd. The agency kept its own name - until now: TNW Programs has become fully integrated into nlmtd and will remain as the Tech Discovery practice. The move happened ahead of schedule: "The collaboration was so seamless from the start that it felt strange to continue operating under two names," says nlmtd founder Pieter Paul van Oerle. We spoke with van Oerle and TNW Programs founder Arno Nijhof about this milestone.
For Pieter Paul van Oerle, it was a bit like being able to take a fledgling child back into his arms when nlmtd took over TNW Programs earlier this year. “I was involved in building the agency from the early days,” he explains.
In doing so, he worked closely with initiators Arno Nijhof and Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten. “We launched TNW Programs in 2016,” Nijhof explains. “Together we managed to build it into a thriving tech-scouting and tech-research firm.”
The agency began as a spin-off from the global tech platform The Next Web (TNW). “A logical place at the time,” says Van Oerle, who himself had in the meantime started an agency with a few associates: nlmtd. “But at the time, there were about ten of us – far too small to house something like TNW Programs immediately.”
That was a different story seven years later, when TNW’s owner, Financial Times, decided to divest TNW Programs. With an innovative business model, nlmtd had now grown into an agency with some 100 employees.
“Just big enough to take over TNW Programs,” Van Oerle said. “So it felt like perfect timing. So we immediately raised our finger lol.”
“And that was completely mutual,” adds Nijhof. “For us, there was only one possible buyer.”
One nlmtd
TNW Programs has now been part of nlmtd for almost a year. Full integration into one entity under one brand is now the next big step – one that comes much earlier than initially planned.
“The idea was that we would remain fairly independent for the first two or three years,” Nijhof outlines. “Sort of like a sister company working very closely with nlmtd.”
Things turned out differently. Not because – as so often with takeovers – the click was a bit disappointing after all, but because the collaboration immediately went so seamlessly. “As a result, it felt a little strange to continue operating under two names,” Van Oerle explains. “It was sometimes even a bit confusing for clients to see a fully integrated team, but with two different business cards and two logos on the proposal.”
The decision to discontinue the TNW Programs brand was made a little easier by the fact that the Financial Times was investing much less in its former parent company, TNW. “For example, they stopped the TNW Conference, which we would have continued to contribute to,” Nijhof says. “Adding up, another reason for us to keep the name thus disappeared.”
Exploring new technologies is also very relevant to their work in the Energy, Innovation, and Sustainability practices.
Tech Discovery
More importantly for Nijhof and Van Oerle, the former TNW Programs team is now truly one with nlmtd. “It’s even easier to work together now,” says Van Oerle. “Because the teams now work in the same office and use the same tools and systems, we know each other even better and can complement each other in our projects with clients. That gives perfect energy.”
Of course, the twenty or so people who came over with TNW Programs continue to do what they do best: driving and accelerating innovation by scouting for new technologies and building ecosystems.
They now do so as a new practice within nlmtd: Tech Discovery. “We really form a specialist unit,” Nijhof explains. “In which, of course, we work very closely with the other practices. Exploring new technologies is, of course, also highly relevant to their work in Energy, Innovation, and Sustainability practices. That flows together very naturally.”
Trusted partners
In that sense, much remains the same. After all, nlmtd and TNW Programs have been working closely together for a long time – even before the takeover a year ago. A good example is Schiphol Airport.
“We have been working together there for more than three years,” says Nijhof. “They asked us to explore options for making baggage handling less burdensome for staff, including through robotization: What type of automation can go where? How does it fit together? What does the baggage hall of the future look like? In doing so, we also took stock of the market: what are the best robotics parties for these specific issues?”
It led not only to significant improvements at Schiphol but also to many new assignments. “At airports all over the world,” says Van Oerle, “Zurich, Copenhagen, Brussels, Toronto, Seoul, as well as various airlines. Pretty special for an independent consulting firm from Amsterdam that all these international major players know how to find us for this.”
Synergy from the start
Above all, according to Nijhof, it illustrates the strong synergy between nlmtd and TNW Programs. “At the time, we won the contract with Schiphol because we are enormously complementary: TNW Programs with the outside view – the tech research and tech scouting – and nlmtd with the connection to the organization: how are you going to adopt all that new technology subsequently?”
“That synergy, of course, was also a major reason we wanted to acquire TNW Programs at the time,” Van Oerle emphasizes. “And the fact that we now see the strength of this confirmed within a year is fantastic. It gives a lot of positive energy to the whole team. And to the market it shows: if you want to explore innovative solutions, you have to be with nlmtd Tech Discovery.”
