The Food Industry Needs a New Approach to Innovation

Food industry CEOs struggle to describe innovation for the operating environment…

…even while declaring it central to their company’s growth objectives.

Given its mighty purpose, innovation should be elevated to a profession inside the company.

But it resides under functional umbrellas, confined to a percent of time and guided by old playbooks, formalities and red tape.

Innovation is defined as new forms of value that consumers or channel customers are willing to pay for.

Or new business models that generate value for the organization itself.

Done correctly reduces costs and risks while meeting important value thresholds.

The broad scope of innovation required to tackle complex consumer markets is underestimated.

Even the best new products fall short or fail when developed within expired business model frameworks.

The food industry is emerging from a period of acquisition and cost cutting as ‘fountains of youth’ that made growth problems worse in the long run, weakening brands and innovation muscle.

The process remains gnarly and dysfunctional especially when business managers are tasked to become value creators: analyzing mounds of common data, stage gate debates, meetings after meetings, retrofitting value propositions to try to recover sunken costs, imprecise terminology not found in the innovation vernacular…

… heavy and complicated with bureaucracy even before the very hard work of creating something valuable begins.

A revolutionary new approach while elevating innovation to its proper standing as a stand-alone profession drives energy, authority, and resources towards a CEO-sponsored place in the organization.

The position becomes singularly focused on foresight, exploration, prototyping and testing new growth engines and business models that deliver growth and ensures the organization's place in the future of the industry.

A mighty purpose that shouldn’t be addressed with dinosaur tactics or supplemental to other functions or time.