Over the past few years several brands have been resorting to open innovation and crowdsourcing techniques for new product development. One of the industry vertical making active use of this technique is the food industry.

1. Open Innovation In The Food Industry
The point of inception for any enterprise, big, small or medium has been an idea. The thought of coming
up with a product, service or initiative that would be of use to the global consumer, has resulted in
the emergence of numerous brands globally. However, the success of continuously developing new
products and better services does not only depend on market research and branding activities or new
business development strategies. What is needed is an environment that is conducive to ideas and
knowledge sharing that brings together multiple views and feedbacks. This too is not just limited to the
organization’s employees, but rather is open to all. This process of sourcing meaningful ideas is termed
as open innovation.
Over the past few years several brands have been resorting to open innovation and crowdsourcing
techniques for new product development. One of the industry vertical making active use of this
technique is the food industry. Let us look at the multinational food manufacturing company Kellogg’s
(United States). The company launched a creative initiative that enabled it in creating a new product
variant of Cereal Straws. This initiative originally started in Spain where children between nine to
ten years shared their breakfast concerns and probable ways to resolve them. The result of from
these detailed discussions was that one should not only drink milkshakes through straws but eat the
straw afterwards that is crunchy and tastes good. The final outcome was a brand new product named
Kellogg’s Cereal Straws with its target audience defined way before the product released in the market.
Therefore we see that open innovation often helps food brand to have a clear idea of their target
consumer group prior to product release. This gives the brand the assurance that the capital and
other resources invested in the product development will not go waste. More than that, it allows the
brands to actually come up with products that are a blend of proper nutrition and taste. Furthermore,
innovative ways of mass idea capture and idea management tactics can not only be used for essential
foods. The same can be applied to fancy food and confectioneries as well.
This is what the multinational confectionery company Kraft Foods, United States did by setting up
an Idea Café along with Insites Consulting to welcome new ideas. The company was looking for
consolidated ideas that can be incorporated on a day to day process. For this the company also invited
50 Belgian Kraft consumers to be a part of this three week idea generation process and Concept

2. Development Community. The final outcome of this open innovation practice was that the company
gathered more than 60 creative food ideas both for short term and long term development.
Thus the future of any company in terms of coming up with better products and meaningful practices
depends on the way idea management tactics are harnessed. Furthermore, this also helps in setting a
deeper audience connect that boosts sales and results in increased goodwill.
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