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.