Baking & Snack - March 2010 - 12

R&D PERSPECTIVE | THERESA COGSWELL

Innovation

Challenge
Everyone strives for innovation,
but how do you ensure success?

akers, food scientists and cereal
chemists working in the grain-based
foods industry are constantly being
challenged to produce new products
and formulations and engage the consumer
base. Besides new product production, the
term "innovation" can apply to developing
new ingredient and new equipment technologies and unique services that your customers cannot live without. Your team strives
to revolutionize the segment in which you
are competing. So if you are starting with a
blank slate, or challenged by marketing or
sales, what is the innovation process?
Innovation takes time, not days or
weeks but more typically months or years
- not quite the answer management
wants to hear. However, the process must
be given enough time to succeed. Time
must be built into the schedule for mistakes and missed deadlines that are often
out of your control. Mistakes made during the innovation process are essential to
success. We tend to learn more from mistakes than successes, and those learning
experiences remain part of the corporate
culture for a longer period of time.
When mistakes are made, we must take
the time to review and analyze what caused
the problems. Whether the mistake was
made during the development process, in
marketing focus groups or at the plant level, it doesn't matter. The only bad mistake is

BAKING & SNACK / March 2010

the one you make tomorrow that you made
today because you did not learn from that
negative, often painful, situation.
True innovation does not focus on
where line downtime or excess capacity
exists in your production facilities. Innovation fills a consumer want or need. So
who decides what is "useful"? It is not the
c.e.o., vice-president of marketing or R&D
working on a hunch. It is your customers and the consumers. In the wholesale/
retail environment, key national customers would be Target, Wal-Mart and large
regional grocery chains.
Successful innovation requires customer and consumer research and turns this
information into innovation platforms.
Today health and wellness is one of the
common innovation platforms for bakery
and snack manufacturers, and they use
this to dive into different categories such as
"reduced sodium," "made with whole
grains" or "clean labels."
Research findings vary but estimates are
that more than half of innovation projects
make little or no contribution to organizational goals. One product innovations survey stated that out of 3,000 ideas for new
products, only one becomes successful in
the marketplace. So why focus on innovation? Because when it works, it has big
paybacks. The timeline for innovation is
longer, but the growth potential is greater.

The graph shows an example of how emerging technology used for innovation can enhance your payback in terms of increased
sales and new customers.
So how do you buoy your chances for
innovation success? Learn from the common causes of failure and from those who
have tried before you and failed or those
who continue to have success. Turn the
Common Causes of Innovation Failure
into positives. Here are the Five Steps to
Successful Innovation:
1. Clearly define the innovation goal.
2. Align the action plan with the goal.
3. Participate in teams (marketing,
R&D, engineering, operations,
finance and purchasing).
4. Monitor results regularly with the
entire team.
5. Communicate, communicate,
communicate, and provide the
team with access to project information, data and results.
Developing successful new products
through a thriving innovation process takes
time, energy and oversight. Partnering with
suppliers to experiment with emerging
technologies and ingredients typically adds
to your ability to introduce new and unique
products to the marketplace - and hopefully ones your consumers want and need.
When you get it right, the rewards
are phenomenal.
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Baking & Snack - March 2010

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