Sustainable Innovation Management in the Food Industry

The dominant innovation strategy of large food companies has long-time revolved around the repeated application of a successful, yet costly scheme that does not lend itself well to walking off known business roads and product/service models.The revolutionary paradigm of 'Open Innovation' (OI) that has crept into the food industry with the aim of increasingand diversifying the company inflow and outflow of innovation-related information, together with the birth of start-up companies with extremely innovative profiles that has followed major societal changes and the increasing awareness of consumers have led to the opening of new innovation scenarios in the food segment and beyond. This paper describes the case of how the Swedish and World-leader crispbread manufacturer Wasa, a major company in the constellation of the Barilla Italian multinational Company, tackled the brand challenge of increasing its penetration beyond the “core Countries” markets through open innovation and the mutual nurturing with a start-up company. The paper summarizes some key elements of a recently started and actively ongoing initiative and discusses some of the lessons learned, which can be further explored in future research, practice, and policy.