Technology Scouting
in the Food Industry

International cereals product manufacturer.

By reaching out to a network of 2 million scientists, scholars and enthusiasts we introduced and connected our client to 5 new solutions and solution providers that were previously unknown to them.

Challenge

Despite a lot of effort and resources, our client had failed to find a solution to reducing bacterial growth in a sealed package containing both flour and water. Bacterial growth is the main hurdle in increasing the shelf life of certain products the client wished to add to its portfolio.

They wanted our help in reaching out to find those solutions they could not see.

Solution

Ideon Open and the Ideon Science Park are connected to more than 200 innovation environments around Europe and have access to 1,000s of high tech startups worldwide. We collaborated with NineSigma, an open innovation platform provider to further broaden the scope of our technology scouting. We posted a “request for proposals” together with a briefing of the problem and the prerequisites for a solution over a period of 6 weeks. After that we summarized and presented the different solutions for our client. Some were highly interesting to the client and were taken forward. The proposed solution had to fit into existing manufacturing processes without any major modifications. We were able to help our client find new solutions to an old problem, but we also introduced them to a more open method of working.

Result

The target was to find at least 3 solutions that were different – but feasible – from the solutions the client tried before. We found 5 solutions from all over the world. Ideon Open played the key role all the way through in this project. From original problem identification through production and publication of the request for proposals, to where the client tried out solutions in pilot tests. This has led to a number of new, interesting solutions to a very difficult problem, and the establishment of valuable future business relationships.