Importance of co-creation and open innovation in the food industry

Importance of co-creation and open innovation in the food industry

Food has entered a fascinating and creative environment in which co-creation and open innovation in the food sector have the last word.

And this reality places the consumer, the R&D&I departments of companies, startups and technology as determining elements on the supply and demand game board.

A board where collaboration acts as a wildcard in co-creation and open innovation strategies.

Because food has changed. The way of eating food is now intimately and socially connected to the concept of balance for people and for the planet.

A healthy diet traditionally represents physical and mental well-being for people, but nowadays it goes further and suggests that those who practice, facilitate and offer it, in other words co-creators and the open innovation model, also contribute to maintaining the planet’s health, sustainability and environmental balance.

The co-creation process in the food sector manages to combine the interests of consumers with those of the industry’s strategies to design a product that, before reaching the market, has already satisfied the expectations of both.

Open innovation would be the strategy model that achieves the culmination of the process.

How does open innovation work in the food sector?

According to the first sectoral report by Eatable Adventures, open innovation in the sector is the model that is gaining ground thanks to the change of mentality of companies, which have found that collaborative environments with startups or professional or university R&D centers encourage much more flexible, agile and efficient innovation.

The laboratories have been installed in the kitchens -they were getting closer and are now part of them- and in them, following the collaborative model of open innovation, R&D teams develop their technological talent supported both by emerging startups and by market strategies that detail a closer knowledge of potential consumers.

New market strategies for a food industry in constant transformation.

New models that facilitate food design with an eye on consumer response. This is what we call Foodtech, which could be translated as food based on technology that is no longer a trend to become, in the very near future, the present of food.

Recall that, in Singapore, since 2020, it is already legal to trade lab-grown meat.

Technology sets the step, from designer foods created from molecular cuisine to new food proposals based on 3D printing or lab-grown meat, as well as successful plant-based proposals and their multiple applications in the food industry.

This is an encouraging scenario in which it is no longer possible to go it alone.

In the food industry, more than ever, it is necessary to create and be part of synergies to accept and successfully overcome the challenges of the future, in which consumers, technology and sustainability are fundamental.

Co-creation and open innovation demonstrate on the ground their importance for the food industry.

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