FuelBox CEO Berta Lende Røed and her business partner Tonje Flack both left steady, well-paid jobs to help people improve their face-to-face communication. Photo: Thomas Lende Røed
Big breakthroughs in a tiny box Imagine that your boss, colleague or spouse suddenly asks you an unexpected question. You might get suspicious and defensive instead of taking time to open up. With the help of a FuelBox, people can easily ask each other the right questions with no hidden agenda. By Eirik Elvevold
Great products often solve specific problems in everyday life. That is at least true for the Norwegian product FuelBox. The idea was born when Berta Lende Røed started missing the deep conversations that made her fall in love with her husband. She started making cards with open-ended questions that could reawaken their honest talks and saved them in a box. Then, one night, she invited her husband to join her on the couch. 76 | Issue 91 | August 2016
“We ended up sitting on the couch for four hours. The questions made us laugh, cry and open up to each other again. I immediately understood that many people could enjoy and even need a box like that,” says Lende Røed, now CEO for Fuel It, the company behind FuelBox. Starting out with a FuelBox for couples, Lende Røed has developed ten different boxes full of questions in only three years. Together with her business partner
Tonje Flack and relevant experts, she carefully formulates questions that will fuel great conversations in specific social and professional contexts. They are now focusing on helping businesses improve their human relations and performance with FuelBox Team, FuelBox Leadership and FuelBox Innovation. They also offer custom-made FuelBoxes. Companies like Bavaria and Innovation Norway have already tailored boxes for their corporate culture and to meet their own customers’ specific needs. “It’s often hard for employees to be honest at work. A FuelBox has no hidden agenda, so people speak up,” Lende Røed explains enthusiastically. The corporate boxes are all about engaging leaders and