Webinar Recap: Agile Innovation Within Big CPG

Webinar Recap: Agile Innovation within Big CPG

30,000 new products are launched every year and 90% of them fail. Some fail publicly with everyone watching, others fail on a smaller stage but with the same amount of pain.

How does big CPG navigate this harsh reality and launch successful products at scale? Recently, Highlight’s Head of Client Success, Keshia Peris, explored lessons learned in this area with thought leaders Barbara Schandl, of Mondeléz Snackfutures, and Elliot Roazen, of Unilever’s Beauty and Personal Care Portfolio.

This webinar was made possible with the help of Insights Association.

Key Moments from the Webinar

Keshia:

What initially drew you into this type of agile team within your organization versus working directly in marketing, directly in product or directly in a strategy team?

Barbara:

The attraction in joining such a team is that in marketing or consumer sides, you work in product units and if it's quite a large organization and is often quite siloed. This team is a fully cross functional team. It's a small team, but it's a cross functional one. So we work together and we have also extended arms in the organization when it comes to product development and when it comes to also understanding trends.

Elliot:

I’ve taken a lot of the growth marketing experience I've had and migrated to innovation. Half of that was intentional in that I wanted to experiment with using a lot of direct to consumer marketing tactics and channels and reverse engineer them into consumer research methodology.

Barbara:

What Eliot said, this testing and learning mentality. It's not just about a 12345 innovation research process like what we used to do in the past. Now it allows a little bit more flexibility, it’s multi-dimensional. What I like and something I apply a lot is asking myself this question when we are working on a particular project or brand, is what do we need to learn in order to move on? It's really about learning and also appreciating progress over perfection.

Keshia:

My next question is around the breadth and the depth of what you're managing on a day to day basis. I mean, we're talking about big bets, new ideas, go/no-go decisions, and then also very tactical depths in order to actually create a brand launch product.

Barbara:

Sometimes agility is only connected with fast but it is also to be very curious and collaborative. Sometimes in organizations, we tend to forget the consumer.

Keshia:

Elliot, you and I had talked about this idea of creating and testing processes, and then actually trying to create a process of the process. Basically, how do we learn to test the test?

Elliot:

Yeah, I think every venture studio has this diagram, the cookie cutter approach, around idea, prototype, test, etc., but what worked a couple months ago is kind of under question now.

Keshia:

How are you all interacting with the broader teams of a broader organization, if at all?

Barbara:

I think it's as important to be connected with the internal team, as it is to be connected and build an external ecosystem.

Elliot:

Being at a big company that starts an innovation team, they really want you to move fast and break things. But there's a natural resistance when you actually do things outside of the status quo.

To listen to the rest of the webinar where these industry experts continue to touch on topics like how innovation has changed in the pandemic and what data they are actually using day to day, check out the recording above!