SEE IT IN ACTION
GET A FEEL FOR THE EXPERIENCE IN 2 MINUTES
Fresh perspectives, humor and a room full of professionals thinking differently. Take a look at what Bas could bring to your audience.
ONE FORMULA. DIFFERENT FLAVORS.
01 INTERACTIVE KEYNOTE
A shared perspective and fresh energy.
Have we become too smart to see the obvious?
Expertise helps us understand the world. It can also make us reach for the same explanations, language and answers. Bas invites your audience to notice those professional filters and explore what becomes possible when they look again.
Through stories, real-life examples, humor and interaction, he introduces Childlike Intelligence and four thinking mechanisms: No Rules, Have Fun, Do Good and No Shame. The formula connects those fresh perspectives with the knowledge already in the room and the small experiments that can turn curiosity into action.
Best suited to
Conferences, leadership meetings, kick-offs and events that want an energizing introduction and a different perspective on serious challenges.
audience take awayS
A shared way to talk about expertise, fresh thinking and action. Four lenses for questioning assumptions. An invitation to reconsider a challenge that matters in their own work.
Duration
20–45 minutes
I loved it! Your sessions completely, lifts the room, and it also opens the floodgates to communicate with each other.
Conrad Schiphorst, Client Partner at IBM
ONE FORMULA. DIFFERENT FLAVORS.
02 IMMERSIVE WORKSHOP
Hands-on practice with a different way of thinking.
What happens when people try the thinking for themselves?
In an Immersive Workshop, participants experience how differently children approach a problem and examine what their own expertise may have taught them to take for granted. They use the four mechanisms to explore fresh angles and experiment with applying the methodology.
A key move is translating a serious challenge into a world a ten-year-old can understand and care about. That translation makes unclear thinking visible. It helps people separate the real question from professional language and unnecessary complexity.
Participants compare perspectives, learn from colleagues and explore how fresh thinking could inform a next step in their everyday work.
BEST SUITED TO
Team events, leadership programs, strategy days and change programs where participants have time to take part and experiment together.
WHAT PARTICIPANTS PRACTICE
Reframing a challenge in accessible language. Questioning an assumption. Exploring possibilities before evaluating them. Connecting an idea with a small experiment they could try.
DURATION
45–120 minutes
I thought it was brilliant! It’s really inspiring to go back into a childlike mindset. It opens up creativity and different ways of problem-solving, creating a springboard to better solutions.
David Stevens, Head Design & Research Coutts / NatWest Group
ONE FORMULA. DIFFERENT FLAVORS.
03 IMPACT MASTERCLASS
Apply the approach in depth to your own challenges and shape next steps
Bring the challenge your team keeps coming back to.
This interactive working session applies Childlike Intelligence to participants’ own organizational challenges. Bas helps people sharpen their problem statements, explore obstacles and use fresh perspectives to develop possible solutions.
The group translates complexity into a question it can work with, challenges familiar assumptions and brings professional judgment back to the possibilities that emerge. Curious Little Experiments then give promising ideas a practical next step.
What could you try? What would you want to learn? What might you notice that helps you decide what to do next?
Best suited to
Strategy, innovation, transformation, problem solving and team development when the purpose is to deepen the thinking and apply it to real work.
group works toward
Clearer problem statements, a better view of the obstacles and fresh possibilities to explore. Concrete Curious Little Experiments that connect the session with everyday practice.
Duration
2–4+ hours
This approach makes it playful, surprising, and brings very creative new ideas. As adults, we tend to do things the same way over and over again, and this offers completely different perspectives. It’s wonderful to look at serious problems with such a fresh outlook. Highly recommended!
Dennis de Mik, Launch Excellence Lead Pfizer
HEAR IT FROM PARTICIPANTS
WHAT DID THEY TAKE AWAY?
Hear reactions from sessions at Digital Catapult and with professionals from Coutts and NatWest in London.
Fresh perspectives, unexpected ideas and new energy for serious challenges. What does that feel like? Let the participants tell you.
THEMES AND AUDIENCES
NO CHALLENGE IS TOO COMPLEX. NOT EVEN YOURS.
Leadership. Strategy. Change. Collaboration. Innovation. AI. Policy. Culture. Sustainability. Governance. Customer experience. The future of work.
The challenge can be highly specialized.
The approach begins by making its core accessible, then combining fresh perspectives with the expertise of the people who understand it.
We can work on one shared challenge, let participants explore their own questions within a common theme, or keep the themes open so everyone works on what matters to them. Exploring individual challenges also reveals what’s on colleagues’ minds, building mutual understanding and uncovering opportunities to support and learn from one another.
Sessions are for professionals at every level and across functions, from executive teams to junior colleagues. Tell us who you want to bring together and what connects them.
AUDIENCE VALUE
GO BEYOND LISTENING.
EXPERIENCE IT.
Thinking Like a Child for Professionals isn’t a lecture about creativity. It’s an experience that brings the formula to life. Participants bring their own expertise and discover how Childlike Intelligence opens up new perspectives on their challenges. Through stories, real-life examples, humor and interaction, we invite them to step outside their professional filters and see through the eyes of a ten-year-old. Curious Little Experiments turn that fresh perspective into first steps. No challenge is too complex.
SEE DIFFERENTLY
Experience how children ask different questions, challenge assumptions and uncover possibilities professionals overlook.
CHALLENGE YOUR THINKING
Use No Rules, Have Fun, Do Good and No Shame as practical lenses to challenge existing thinking.
MAKE COMPLEXITY ACCESSIBLE
Reframe your challenge for a ten-year-old. Separate what truly matters from the noise and uncover what professional language hides.
APPLY IT
Bring childlike intelligence directly into your own challenges, strategies, gaps and opportunities.
LEARN FROM EACH OTHER
Share individual challenges and perspectives. Discover what is happening across the organization and how differently colleagues approach complex problems.
ACT DIFFERENTLY
Turn fresh ideas into Curious Little Experiments: small things you can try in your everyday work to discover what happens.
AND TAKE IT HOME…
An unexpected bonus: parents, aunts and uncles discover they have their own little consultants at home. The same techniques help you involve children in organizational challenges, decisions and change. Expect surprising insights, fun around the kitchen table and children who feel proud that their ideas matter.
HELP FOR EVENT ORGANIZERS
LET’S MAKE YOUR EVENT WORK. AND YOUR LIFE EASIER.
Tell us what you’re planning. We’ll help you explore the options, provide everything you need around Bas’s session, and make your job a whole lot easier.
You don’t need to have everything figured out yet, including which format will work best. Tell us what you have in mind: your audience, available time and event theme, the message you want to reinforce, the challenges you want to explore and the difference you’d like the session to make.
We’ll help shape the right experience: an Interactive Keynote, Immersive Workshop, Impact Masterclass or a blend of these. Send us a message, and let’s arrange a call to explore the possibilities together.
From the briefing and timing to room setup, sound, screen and coordination with your technical team, we’ll work through the practical details with you so you know what’s needed.
You’ll also receive a ready-to-use event pack with photos, speaker bios and promotional copy, plus custom-made video material if needed. Materials for before and after the session help you promote your event and keep the thinking alive afterward.
Bas delivers sessions worldwide in English (or Dutch), provided travel and accommodation are safe. He is based in the Netherlands and often combines events into one trip, so your location may fit into a journey already taking shape.
Bringing dates, destinations and travel together can be quite a puzzle, but we enjoy finding a way to make it work. Bas’s calendar fills up quickly, so getting in touch early gives us more room to plan. Event coming up soon? Do reach out. With a little creativity, we may still be able to make it work or help you find a suitable alternative.
Bas’s sessions get enthusiastic reactions from a wide range of audiences, from executive teams and legal professionals to engineers, healthcare specialists and public sector leaders.
Still, someone on your team may need a little extra encouragement before embracing the idea of Thinking Like a Child. Drawing on more than ten years of experience, we’ve created five recognizable personas, from the Serious Professional to the Practical Decision-Maker, with practical tips and useful arguments to help you bring each one on board.
Visit the Event Organizer Helper for practical tips, and download the Thinking Like a Child for Professionals Information Pack for everything you need to know about Bas’s sessions.
Need a little more help? Let us know. We’d love to take on the challenge with you.
We work with predefined fee ranges for different regions and event settings. Our preferred approach is to agree on the applicable range upfront and let you decide the final fee within that range after the session. This way, the fee is fully aligned with the value you feel it brought to your event.
After the session, simply tell us the amount within the agreed range you feel reflects the value you experienced, with a brief explanation to help us learn from your feedback. We’ll invoice that exact amount without further negotiation.
Bas’s speaker fees are in line with market rates. During our first call, we can share the applicable fee range or give you an indication of a fixed fee if that better suits your budgeting or procurement process. This gives you clarity from the start. Any additional travel and accommodation expenses will be agreed in advance and charged at actual cost.
Tell us what you’re planning and what you’d like participants to think, feel and do differently afterward.
LET’S EXPLORE
Tell us about your event, your audience and what you’d like them to take away. Leave your contact details below, and we’ll get back to you within two working days to explore an experience that fits.
And… No need to have everything figured out yet.
Prefer to get in touch directly? Call +31 6 528 81 023 between 9:00 AM and 6:00 PM CET, or send us an email.
If you can’t solve a problem,
it’s because you’re playing by the rules
PARTICIPANTS AFTERWARDS
This approach makes it playful, surprising, and brings very creative new ideas. As adults, we tend to do things the same way over and over again, and this offers completely different perspectives. It’s wonderful to look at serious problems with such a fresh outlook. Highly recommended!
Dennis de Mik
Launch Excellence Lead Pfizer
Good exercise to simplify problems to the core and it also provided valuable insights into the challenges to bring affordable and qualitative healthcare to more people without access to medical services.
If we continued to ‘think like a child’ as adults, the world would only know solutions.
Margot Cooijmans
Director Philips Foundation Impact Investments
A fun, refreshing, and creative approach that makes you look at and think about the challenges we deal with daily in a completely different way. It literally shifts your perspective. It’s amazing to start with a blank slate and approach the topics we usually write reports about and debate over. And now, to tackle them openly and freely using Bas’s method.
Hindrik Jan Knot
Director Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate policy