We spoke about this question with Doctor Elke De Clerck, Global Science & Innovation Director at Rousselot, hearing her perspective on key matters, including:
- The new ways of looking at innovation;
- How to ask the right questions;
- Fostering resilient, multidisciplinary teams, who operate with robust innovation platforms;
- Planning for unique scenarios to ensure we can adapt to whatever directions the market takes in the future;
- The right metrics to evaluate innovation performance - and potentially change direction if needed.
Reimagining innovation to reimagine value
Innovation appears to be everywhere today and one of the key methods of protecting it from devaluation is to reimagine the word itself. If you’re a manufacturer, it is easy to rely on an inside-out view, starting from what you offer and how your customers use it. This is what Rousselot has done historically: seeing innovation as the development of new products to offer to our customers. On today’s changeable, unpredictable markets, we look for new angles. For example, what if we examine our portfolio from the outside-in, or if we apply, to use a term that is rapidly gaining ground in fields ranging from science to business strategy, a ‘future-back’ approach? This means forming an informed picture of the future in terms of societal and other trends, exploring how these might impact not only our customers, but also their customers or end consumers, and thinking about what changes we might need to make to support customers in absorbing that impact. Innovation like this means asking the right questions: What forces are shaping our world? What possible scenarios may emerge over time? What are the issues our customers will be facing, and what trends are, or may be, impacting the markets we serve? This approach is based on the assumption that future consumers may well face challenges we cannot yet imagine, or demand value in forms we do not even recognize today. Take this story about Apple’s first iPhone, for example: when it was first introduced onto the market, Microsoft’s CEO was famously skeptical, asking ‘who would ever want a smartphone without a physical keyboard?’. Now, with hindsight, we can see that Apple’s shift was the correct decision, with this revolutionary change becoming the industry standard. It’s forward-thinking risks like these that enable players to meet consumer demands. It’s about taking into account that today’s commodities may be tomorrow’s gold –or vice versa.
Interdisciplinary innovation teams
Another way of keeping ahead of the game in innovation is to make sure your innovation team is working at peak performance. Making sure your teams are adaptable, versatile, and multidisciplinary is one way of doing this. It’s like an ecosystem: once you start working with specialists, whole new networks open up, with new problem/solution combinations, new perspectives, new possibilities to explore. When pooled together, these experts can find unique ways of looking at problems, each discipline bouncing off the others, coming up with innovative solutions. In our Science & Innovation teams, we’ve brought in different experts, including external consultants and full-time researchers, each bringing unique expertise to the table. Our co-workers are not just advanced scientists and chemists; we work with data experts who can help us untangle big data, process consultants who manage KPIs and efficiency, and marketing and intellectual property (IP) specialists. It is by using this multidisciplinary approach that unique product-market combinations arise, combining a product/technology push with a (future) market pull. This might result in entering a market early, requiring flexibility and deep expertise on all fronts to move as the market develops. Our activities in the biomedical segment are an excellent example where we have invested early to be ready for our customers’ needs.
It’s like an ecosystem: once you start working with specialists, whole new networks open up, with new problem/solution combinations, new perspectives, new possibilities to explore
Balancing disruption and production
A major challenge for innovative companies is that their innovation teams need the freedom to be disruptive. That’s why a company’s innovation pipeline is so important. At Rousselot, we have structured our Innovation Process in this light: at the fuzzy front end or sandbox stage, we can gather exciting concepts for innovation. We can ask relevant questions about the validity and value of possible innovations and gradually turn assumptions into knowledge. Measuring the return on the investment in this early ideation is addressed by balancing the KPIs of effort and resources against the potential return once the project is launched. Following this, viable ideas move into Rousselot Portfolio Management (RPM): a gateway towards Innovation Projects, where accepted projects are taken forward towards launch.
The reason we have a wall between the fuzzy front end and the launch stage is to prevent our work from being disruptive in the wrong ways and at the wrong moments. And if a new direction we are pursuing becomes too disruptive for any of our three company segments, we must be prepared to create a new segment for it: the structure is subservient to growth, development, and innovation.
Simulating future scenarios
While innovation is often based on experimentation, at some point, you need to make decisions. When you need to take the plunge, scenario planning is essential. This form of strategic planning lets you engage with a range of future possibilities, analyzing the impact of specific decisions in a simulation of the future. It helps you highlight the risks and opportunities in each scenario, and equips you to successfully navigate whichever one emerges in reality. The key questions here are:
- What are the fundamental premises beneath your operations?
- What unknowns are there you need to uncover?
- How will these interact in any given scenario?
By mapping scenarios and examining plausible outcomes, you can begin to understand, and prepare for, the future; next, you can begin to sketch your role in the future, brainstorming about the products or processes you might need to thrive in each scenario. This approach gives you what you need to validate assumptions, finding concrete evidence to support decisions.
By mapping scenarios and examining plausible outcomes, you can begin to understand, and prepare for, the future; next, you can begin to sketch your role in the future…
Using the right metrics
How can you ensure that your innovation is always aligned with the bottom line? While it’s tough to predict the return on investment in our field, here, we use the Product Vitality Index (PVI) metric to record the revenue we have gained from new innovations against the revenue of the entire company. This helps us to strategize, understanding fully the impact of what we have done and what we plan to do. It is an essential element of the innovation ecosystem.
Summing up
While innovation is still a buzzword, it can be so much more. By taking approaches further and further, reimagining the standard definition, you can elevate what you mean by innovation: enhancing what you offer to customers and consumers and keeping in step with changing and emerging markets. Innovation is more than just a word: it’s the future.
by Elke De Clerck