Official bio

After eight years of marketing & research with Hewlett-Packard, Arjan Postma (1972) became a tutor in interactive & strategic marketing at several business schools. His focus was how technological innovation impacts society and maybe even more important vice versa, how societies impact technological innovation.

This research eventually grew into a research agency for applied creativity, UR/Jamby (URJ). An early stage incubator, responsible for digital creativity & strategy. In that period he experimented with the production of both open source tools as well as interactive media productions from webchannels to mobile gaming. One of the first assignments was to be involved with the online development of the first edition of Big Brother, never knowing it was going to be such a global television hit. Other clients of URJ were amongst others RTL, U2, Nasa, Dutch Ministry of Education etc.

The rollercoaster of the dotcom wave took the company from five to far over a hundred employees and than burst apart into several segments which are now mostly incorporated in still existing ICT & media-companies. The lessons learned from this unique experience he encaptured in a documentary series with the striving research-question: "Powerplay: Who determines your near future?". Based on his experience and insights in two major aspects of disruptive innovation - the emerging technologies at HP and the d creativity at URJ - he than founded an European institute for Future Studies, FreedomLab and a studio for Creative Strategies, Eliace. 

Arjan remained his apetite as a tutor on the field of Applied Creativity: How to benefit from the tools and techniques of the creative industries to encounter 21st centiury challanges? He especially invested in how to deal with the problems and processes as a group; co-creation as a means to counter  the so-called wicked problems of our time. Being at the fronteir meant that knowhow was to gained from experience. On one hand Arjan interviewed over 150 opinion leaders in this fiels of expertise ánd  with a group of mindliked friends he challenged all existing models for smallgroup behaviour, design thinking, social innovation etc.  Arjan has applied his approach to a large range of the top 100 companies throughout Europe. 

His dream is to convert his network, experience and insights into an international school on the subject of 'Generative culture: an inquisitive and designerly way of organizing change'.

Professional background

With great pleasure I have worked with the following partners:

ABN AMRO bank

Ahold

Alliander

Albright group

ANWB

Amnesty International

APG

Coburn Ventures

Cruyff group

Dance4Life

Dasym Investments

Deltalloyd

Design Academy Eindhoven

Emesa

Endemol International

European Broadcast Union

Exclusive Media Group

Fremantle media

Gemeente Amsterdam

Gemeente Arnhem

Gemeente Hilversum

Gemeente Utrecht

Gugenheim 

Hewlett-Packard

KLM

Ministerie van OC&Wb

Oxxio energie

Filmfonds

IDTV

ING

ISVW

Menzis

NHTV

Philips

PGGM

KPN Telecom

Sanoma Uitgevers

SBS broadcasting

Stegeman

Talpa

Telegraaf

Veronica

Vezet

Amsterdam Economic Board

United Nations PRI

KPN Telecom

PuntEdu

Laluz

Ongetemd

Radio 538

Randstad

RTL

Rijkswaterstaat 

Shine media

Sogeti

Topkapi

THNK Creative Leadership