Embracing innovation in a competitive environment Nard Clabbers is Senior Business Developer Personalized Nutrition and Health at TNO, where he, together with Wageningen University, has set up a large international research consortium that investigates technical and social innovations to enable personalised nutrition through consumer empowerment. This pre-competitive public-private consortium is unique in combining different scientific expertise and using real-world field labs. Manuela Borella is Vice President of Danone’s Innovation Incubator. Her passion for harvesting diverse talent to unlock team potential, in addition to a rich corporate network, enabled her to lead one of the first successful multinational incubators. She has a deep wealth of operational experience in corporate strategy, brand building, P&L management and marketing. Julian Mellentin is the Founder of New Nutrition Business, expert consultancy services to ingredient and branded product companies on all aspects related to nutrition and health since 1995. The company has offices in London, Scotland, Portugal, USA, and affiliates in Korea and Japan. Their customers range from global players to startups, and NNB is best-known for its annual 10 Key Trends in the Business of Food & Health. Jeremy Basset is CEO of Co:Cubed where he works with some of the world’s largest businesses to re-think their organisational approach to innovation, and help them build and execute their collaborative innovation capabilities. Prior to launching CO:CUBED, Jeremy spent 13 years at Unilever where he was responsible for launching and then leading the Unilever Foundry, Unilever’s platform to engage with startups and innovative companies who can help Unilever pioneer the future. Through the Foundry, over 1500 of Unilever marketers have worked with over 200 startups, brining innovative technology and an entrepreneurial culture to Unilever. Maarten Ooms is Managing Director in Rabobank’s Financial Advisory and Solutions group, where he oversees their Food and Agri Innovation initiatives in the European region. As part of his responsibilities, he assists young growth companies raise capital in private placement rounds. While size gives larger food companies a strategic advantage in terms of marketing heft and brand recognition, they can be slower to react to market shifts and new consumer demands. This creates opportunities for more agile startups to prosper. What should businesses – large and small – be doing to embrace innovation and keep ahead of the competition? These were some of the issues debated at a Future of Nutrition Summit 2019 panel discussion, entitled ‘Innovating the food system: how are companies embracing the faster pace of change in the food system?’, moderated by Nard Clabbers from TNO. The panellists included Julian Mellentin from New Nutrition Business, Manuela Borella from Danone, Maarten Ooms from Rabobank and Jeremy Basset from CO:CUBED.
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