1. Identify Core Values and Passion (What You Love)

Passion is the driving force behind creativity and innovation. In the food industry, aligning the innovation process with what team members love can lead to remarkable breakthroughs and a motivated workforce. This section explores how to tap into core values and passion to fuel the innovation engine.

• Align roles based on player strengths and interests: Sometimes, this means defining the team roles more directly to their job, and other times, this means giving stretch assignments so they can work on things that fuel their interests. The point here is to learn about the team's individual talents and interests so you can assemble the team that's right for the task or goal at hand. As an individual, this requires some introspection and sharing your findings with your team so they know what's important to you. The key here is to link your passion with your inner values, as well as the organizational values and goals.
  

2. Leverage Expertise (What You Are Good At)

Expertise is a valuable asset in the innovation process. Leveraging the skills and knowledge of team members and partners can result in more effective and efficient solutions. This section focuses on strategies for harnessing expertise to drive collaborative innovation.

• Leveraging expertise is as much about assigning roles as it is about providing clarity on where those people and expertise are activated within the innovation process. When you think through the stage gate process for a project, take the time to assign activation points for all the key team members so everyone knows when to get involved and what they are charged with accomplishing. This helps avoid overlap and also encourages people to play to their strengths without getting burnt out.



Once you have the team assembled and goals aligned, here are some ways you can work together:

• Patron Councils: Utilize supplier-managed customer councils to generate ideas and leverage their expertise in understanding customer preferences.
• Supplier Councils: Organize suppliers across core complementary categories to leverage their specialized knowledge and skills.
  

3. Address Market Needs (What the World Needs)

Successful innovation addresses real market needs and solves genuine problems. By understanding and responding to these needs, businesses can create products and services that truly resonate with consumers. Here, we examine the methods for aligning innovation with market demands.

• Research and Understanding Breeds Better Ideas: one common mistake when approaching innovation is jumping too early into the idea generation without doing the due diligence to understand the market dynamics, market demand, white space opportunities, and how they overlay with core company strengths and capabilities. This takes a dual approach to looking internally and externally to connect the dots.

A few ideas on how you can help understand the market are: 

• Include Customers in the Innovation Process: Conduct consumer screeners and focus groups to ensure the innovations meet actual market demands.
• Gap Analysis: Understand current and target customers by overlaying market and consumer trends with existing menu items and identifying gaps.
• Get Curious: explore the existing business or operations with a new eye. Put yourself in the perspective of the employee or customer. How do you want your experience to be, and what can you do to make it better?
  

4. Ensure Economic Viability (What You Can Be Paid For)

For innovation to be sustainable, it must also be economically viable. Balancing creativity with profitability is key to long-term success. This section discusses strategies for ensuring that innovative ideas can be monetized effectively.

• Gone are the days when items can make it to the market based on the whim of a few key people's decisions. While that might have been possible pre-COVID in an era where menu innovation was rampant and few things graduated off the menu in comparison to what was being added, nowadays we see a reverse pattern because of the embrace of simplicity, and in response to both continues supply chain issues, and lack of quality, consistent labor.
• To succeed in today's environment takes a higher level of skill, discipline, discernment, and agility. 

We have to be fast but still strategic by way of:

• Establishing Clear Benchmarks: ensure the team is aligned on key metrics well in advance so the development process stays effective to the organizational goals. Clear communication is key.
• Testing Early and Fast: using online surveys to screed out ideas before a lot of time is put against fully baking them out.
• Multi-Sourcing: think through and develop multiple options in sourcing to keep competition strong and options open so the project stays on track even if one supplier or another has to drop out for whatever reason.
• Being Careful Not to Over or Under-Develop: think about the quality and claims associated with your idea or product. Are you getting credit for it or the work you are putting into it on a regular basis? If not, you might want to rethink your approach. Likewise, be careful not to cut costs so much that it hampers market appeal. You can't cost cut to profitability if demand isn't there for the product.
• Thinking Two Steps Ahead: understand that sometimes the market may change unexpectedly. Maybe a commodity cost went up unexpectedly, or a mass supply chain short on a key ingredient happens. This can put a wrench in things if you only have one plan. Whether you are developing products to manufacture or something to be served in the restaurant, it's always important to have more ideas in the pipeline than what you need or have slots for. In doing so, you insulate the business from unexpected external circumstances and are better prepared to go forward with a plan B without skipping a beat.
• Being Ready to Pivot: realize that innovation isn't necessarily a linear process and that it often requires you to take a step back every now and then to adjust, redevelop, or recalibrate. If you expect this as part of the process, it becomes easier to navigate once those wrinkles come to light. Be firm on the Why and flexible on the How.