Consumer Products Blog
Kick-starting open innovation with formulation
By Rachel Harker - Last updated: Friday, November 26, 2010Yesterday was the ‘Formulated Product Design: Kick-Starting Open Innovation’ event in snowy Harrogate. This was a networking and matchmaking event aimed at connecting Open Innovation staff at large firms like P&G, Reckitt Benckiser and Kraft Cadbury with small companies delivering innovations in formulation. This was interesting to us, because we often get called on by the larger companies to help them to find novel ways to dispense new formulations to consumers by way of small appliances or retail equipment. We like these projects; they often involve nice food and drink plus a good deal of goopy stuff (formulation) which makes for interesting fluid mechanical and thermodynamic challenges.
There were lots of interesting presentations through the day. Our friend Mike Addison from P&G talked about ‘Why Open Innovation? Why partner with a multinational?’ which was as entertaining as his recent talk alongside us at the Cambridge Network Consumer Product & Supply SIG – ‘Vitality & Health for Consumers’. Clive Norton from Cadbury Kraft Foods also talked about the power of tailored mock ups and demonstrators to help sell innovations into Cadbury. This reinforced the messages we have been delivering through our ‘Bathtub to Warehouse’ workshops. We believe that demonstrators are crucial for startups trying to win their first clients and funding. Syntopix, a startup, presented their antimicrobial anti-acne formulation. They made their breakthrough when they took the chemical principles which allow plastics to be coated onto mobile phones and applied them to their topical formulation for the skin, resulting in a far more quick and effective treatment for pimples: a brilliant example of taking an established technology from one sector and using it to create a breakthrough in another.
Thank you to RTC North, Intelligent Formulation and Enterprise Europe Network for the day.
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November 26, 2010 @ 9:45 pm
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