General Mills Open Innovation Strategy

http://www.foodprocessing.com/articles/2009/rdteam-generalmills.html

General Mills, 4 years ago developed and open innovation strategy to combat the challenge of bring innovative and inventive products to the market quickly.

To do this, General Mills had to tear down the traditional walls of proprietary thinking commonplace in the food industry, even within companies with multiple divisions and begin to trust industry experts from within and externally.

Jeff Bellairs, director of G-WIN (General Mills World Innovation Network)stated that there are two key elements to their program. One, is there catalyst team or "X-squad", a small, centralized group focusing on open innovation, which brings in the tools for best practices and acts as a catalyst to inspire their divisional resources. Second, was to build effective partnerships from outside that could supply them with technology, products or some unique capability and to connect more effectively with suppliers, traditionally they have been kept at arms length.

By doing this General Mills has had their most successful launches in years with the introduction of the Progressive Light line of soups, the new Yoplait Smoothies that were launched in club stores and Pillsbury's Bread Bowl Bites.

Since the introduction of the open innovation strategy, the program has evolved into a revolutionary initiative throughout General Mills.

David Michael's Innovation Roadshow 2009

http://www.dmflavors.com/innovation_roadshow.htm


Last week I had the privilege in attending the David Michael 2009 Innovation Roadshow.

David Michael & Co. (DM) is a company that provides flavors to the food industry. Where ever you see natural or artificial flavors on an ingredient statement, companies like David Michael are the companies that make them.

At the Roadshow each year, DM highlights the up and coming trends in flavors and consumer trends as well as technical and culinary creativity.

This year the topics that caught my attention were the comfort food trends and emerging ethnic flavors. Comfort food trends or "Grandma's recipes with a twist" covered the Baby Boomer and the Gen X generations, where the Baby Boomers prefer "classic" foods such as braised meats, casseroles, ice cream, gourmet artisan cheeses and dark chocolates; where the Gen Xers prefer fast food, packaged cooking, and snacks. The top trends that are emerging are being seen in meatloaf, mac & cheese, artisan pies, breakfast for dessert and casseroles. DM used the "mini" trend and demonstrated concepts like Meatloaf Cupcakes. They showed an Italian herb flavored meatloaf cupcake with a butter parmesan flavored potato frosting and a caramelized onion flavored meatloaf cupcake with a brown sugar cinnamon sweet potato flavored frosting. DM also showed "Pie Pops", which pretty much were apple pie and dark chocolate yumberry pie on a stick and with sticking with the "100 calorie" or less trend, one pir pop was 50 calories, essentially dessert on the go.

Emerging trends in ethnic flavors that were discussed were flavors from Australia, flavors like rosella (wild hibiscus) and the Australian blood lime. In addition, DM covered the emerging flavors from Asia. Flavors such as, Honey Sweet Date (Jujubee), Sea Buckthorn (Hippohae), Lychee, Yuzu, Pomelo and Shiso (Japanese basil). For the first time we are seeing more flavor trends emerging from South America, flavors such as Lucuma from Peru and other flavors like guanabana, prickely pear/cactus and chermoya.

The David Michael Innovation Roadshow directly relates to my job as a product developer and manager of the retail development lab. Staying in touch with emerging trends keeps helps to keep the products we sell current and helps us maintain a competitive edge in the market place.

'Smart Stop' Technology- Automatic Brakes

Mercedes Benz is coming out with a new driver-assist technology that will allow smart intersections communicate with your vehicle. The idea is that the technology called the the "Smart Stop" system will communicate with an intersection which would automatically stop your car in the event you fail to stop at a red light. A monitor in the car would also display real time traffic data and your distance from the intersection. The technology could potentially communicate with other cars that have the technology, to prevent accidents and car pile ups.

I don't know about you, but I don't think I will be purchasing a car with this type of technology anytime soon. For any of you who have ever driven on snowy roads may know, sometimes in poor conditions you couldn't stop at a red light even if you wanted to and if you attempted, you would end up sitting in the middle of the intersection, so your best option is to continue to go through. I can see it now, some poor person is stuck in the middle of an intersection because their car has decided that they are running a light. I think I prefer to keep the decision making in my hands, or should I say foot?

Check out the article, there is a short video demoing the "Smart Stop" technology.

http://www.gizmag.com/mercedes-benz-smart-stop-system/13122/

Penny-sized Nuclear Powered Battery

http://www.gizmag.com/smaller-nuclear-battery/13076/

Researchers at the University of Missouri are currently in the developmental stage of engineering a battery that is smaller, lighter and more efficient than current nuclear batteries that have been on the market for years and have powered items such as pacemakers, satellites and underwater systems.

Nuclear batteries are unlike nuclear reactors that power our cities and towns as they do not use a chain reaction that is continuous. Nuclear batteries use emissions from radioactive isotopes to generate electricity, so there is no risk of a meltdown.

The battery is currently being developed by Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Missouri University. What makes his battery innovative over existing nuclear batteries is that he is utilizing liquid semiconductor as opposed to a solid conductor. In the past, the radiation energy would damage the lattice structure of the solid semiconductor, by using a liquid semiconductor, Kwon hopes to minimize that problem.

President Obama's Strategy for American Innovation

http://www.usinnovation.org/files/Obama'sInnovationStrategySept20_2009.pdf

In an effort to turn the economy around and provide sustainable growth, the National Economic Council Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Barack Obama have put together a strategy that will hopefully drive the U.S. towards sustainable growth and provide quality jobs.

Above is the link to the 26-page white paper published from the Executive Office of the President. In summary the goal of strategy is to accomplish sustainable growth, quality jobs and to have shared prosperity. To do this the plan is to have a dynamic private sector that is more solid, broad-based, in conjunction with sensible, balanced government policies.

The strategy is broken out into three main stages or steps. First, the government will "Invest in the Building Blocks of American Innovation", by developing and advanced information technology ecosystem, by educating the next generation with 21st century knowledge, restoring American leadership in fundamental research and finally, by building a leading physical infrastructure.

The second stage is to "Promote Competitive Markets that Spur Product Entrepreneurship". To accomplish this, the government will promote American exports and support open capital markets that allocate resources to the most promising ideas. In addition, they will encourage high-growth and innovation-based entrepreneurship while improving public sector innovation and support community innovation.

The third stage, "Catalyze Breakthroughs for National Priorities" by unleashing a clean energy revolution and supporting advanced vehicle technology, while driving brakthroughs in health IT and addressing the "gran challenges" of the 21st century.

The white paper covers much more than what I have mentioned above. Some other intersting points includes the breakout of where the Recovery Act spending is to go. I recommend that you read or at least thumb through the paper.

Innovative Eco Products in Japan

While prowsing on the web I stumbled upon this interesting video on some recent "innovative" eco solutions in Japan, which include a way to turn news paper into bricks to use a fuel source and a new toilet flapper that significantly reduces the amount of water used in flushing.

Check out the link below to watch the short video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGp540bIUuc

Sopheon Software-Streamlining Innovation

http://www.sopheon.com/HOME/tabid/290/Default.aspx


As I was browsing the web searching for topics to blog I found this website about this company Sopheon. Sopheon is a company that provides software, in particular Accolade, that can help a company effectively manage its product innovation processes to spur growth. The company also promises their software will give higher product success rates by identifying the most viable new product ideas and most attractive market segments before precious resources are invested in product development.

The Accolade software focuses on product innovation management and the best way to streamline the product development process by identifying key stages. The stages Sopheon has identified are:

Ideation
Scoping new projects, including resource requirements
Building a business case
Developing the most commercially promising ideas
Testing
Launch
Post-launch follow-up

In addition, the software supposedly supports enterprise-wide, cross-functional product portfolio management and process execution. The system captures, organizes and delivers information, and provides centralized data management. The software can also be integrated into Microsoft.

Software like this can help ones company to structure, automate and measure product innovation.

I recommend you check out their website, the information they have on their product is quite interesting and I plan to pitch the idea to some of my superiors at work as we are in desperate need of so type of centralized data management software, to say the least.

Innovation Gone Bad - Direct to Consumer Advertising

http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/8/09-040809/en/index.html

Direct to consumer (DTC) advertising was revolutionary and innovative in the pharmaceutical world and had been legal in the US since 1985. It wasn't until 1997 when the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) loosened their regulations on DTC advertising by requiring drug companies to include detailed list of side-effects associated with taking the advertised drugs during the infomercial. These loosened regulations have helped the pharmaceutical industry earn billions or not trillions.

DTC advertising has ended up being the most profitable marketing approach ever conceived for the pharmaceutical industry, however in their attempts to make profits, like many advertisements, they have begun to deceive consumers, which can ultimately cause people their lives. Case-in-point is a DTC ad put out by Pfizer for their drug Lipitor. In their ad, they had this respected doctor come on, "Dr. Robert Jarvik", come on and say that just because he is a doctor that doesn't mean he doesn't have to worry about his cholesterol and that's why he takes Lipitor. The add introduces him as the inventor of the artificial heart. The ad completely misleads consumers, as "Dr. Robert Jarvik" is has never been a licensed medical doctor, so he can not prescribe drugs. Jarvik also did not invent the artificial heart, according to three former colleagues. The add also goes on to show him rowing a boat, when in fact he never rowed the boat. Pfizer was forced to pull their ad, but after lying to how many people and convincing how many people to start taking Lipitor. Pfizer expressed regret for misleading consumers and swore never to portray actors as doctors.

Additional "side effects" of DTC advertising include the increased use of off-label uses of drugs, uses not approved by the FDA, the increased pressures primary care physicians are facing by patients pressuring them to prescribe treatments to ailments they may or may not have.

So what was touted as a way to save money in the health care industry by educating consumers on alternate medicines and bringing to light conditions people may have so they can seek prescription treatment as opposed to costly surgeries, may have ended up costing the health care industry more money by making people think there is something wrong with them when in fact there may be nothing wrong. It certainly is costing consumers more than they realize.

Turning Duds into Dollars-Reviving Failed Innovations

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_25/b4136044140573.htm?chan=magazine+channel_in%3A+inside+innovation

More often than not innovations never get to market or come to life due to failure. The failure can be due to a number possibilities such as poor market timing, poor design, lack of technology, impracticality, just to give a few reasons. However, just because an innovation has failed, that doesn't mean there may not be useful down the road as failed innovations tend to become the steps or building blocks for further innovative ideas.

back in the late 90's and early 2000's
A perfect example of turning duds into dollars, is in the case of Hewlett-Packard's (HP) automated innovation software, known as "genetic programming" (GP), HP designed the GP Lab that would analyze the "genes" of earlier inventions to design new ones. The reason the automated innovation software failed, is that is often lead scientists to dead ends or as the article put it "it became a hammer in search of a nail" or a tool without a purpose. The project was canned as because it didn't have an immediate payoff.

This dud was turned into dollars as increasing financial pressures at HP during 2008 forced it managers cut department budgets. Kirshenbaum, the inventor of GP Lab at HP, had documented his research and archived the algorithms he used so well, he was able to modify his automated innovation software in about a day, into an efficiency too that HP used to forecast manufacturing and shipping needs based on predicted sales growth and supply it's global offices and factories as cheaply as possible.

This re-invention of Kirshenbaum's automated innovation ended up saving HP in the neighborhood of 20% of it's supply costs.

9/12/09 Innovative Green Food Packaging

As manufacturing struggles with the continuing increase in costs of packaging material, due to the fact that the majority of packaging in the market today are either made from non-renewable (depleting) fossil fuels or trees, they are always on the look out for alternative forms of packaging that are cheaper and "greener" than existing packaging.

Last week as I was thumbing through a trade magazine called Packaging Digest, which covers the latest and greatest in packaging design and marketing, I came across this new packaging that SunChips is coming out with, a biodegradable bag, which with debut on Earth Day 2010.

For those of you who do not know too much about SunChips, the name comes from the fact that FritoLay uses solar energy to help generate steam which in turn is used to heat the oil used in cooking SunChips. In addition, 33% of the current bag is from renewable plant based material, in continuing with this green initiative, Sunchips is launching their new innovative biodegradable bag in 2010, which will degrade in 12-16 weeks under normal aerobic hot composting conditions (1). So anyone and everyone who has a compost pile or pin can now add SunChip's bag to the list of compostable material and certainly feel less guilty about it. The only draw back to the new bag, just like the majority of existing packaging, it does not significantly decompose in anaerobic conditions, which is typical of what you would find in landfills.



Below is the link to the video where SunChips built a compost bin with a glass panel on one side to view the degrading bag and took pictures every 15 minutes over a 14 week period (1). Click the link below to watch the short video.


http://sunchips.com/advertising_television.shtml



(1) http://sunchips.com/resources/pdf/SunChips_BehindtheScenes.pdf