5-DAY INNOVATION PIPELINE FOR F500 FOOD BRANDS

A heritage F500 Food & Beverage Company approached The Garage Group in January 2018 with the objective of revitalizing their portfolio with meaningful, consumer-first ideas to fill their 3-year innovation pipeline. Faced with evolving competitive pressure, the stakes were higher than ever to keep their iconic brands relevant, extend their existing categories into new spaces, and get products to market faster.

We led 8 cross-functional teams through the Innovation Pipeline Sprint process. Here is one example of how this approach took life: We led the team through pain point discovery via Digital Ethnography (14 recruited consumers), empathy-building Team Missions, and existing category expertise. By day two of the Sprint, the team translated those pain points into Jobs to be Done, and prioritized Jobs to be Done based on strength of the external consumer need vs. the strength of brand’s internal right to solve. On day three, the team divergently ideated on solutions via an infusion of external inspiration. Once lead ideas were prioritized, the team explored 10 divergent directions in parallel, building out a customized Business Model Canvas per idea, iteratively fielding questions with consumers in real-time on iPads (9 recruited consumers) and scrappy phone-a-friend’s (6-8 consumers). Translating canvases into consumer-facing concepts, we fielded overnight qualitative research (30 recruited consumers).

With iterative input from 50+ consumer touchpoints in 5 days, the team has transformed their historical linear process of uncovering insights to idea creation. By Day 5, the team was equipped with 10 consumer-vetted concepts ranging from product to packaging innovation, each designed to solve for a distinct consumer Job to be Done. The following week, the team implemented their holistic action plan, designing experiments to learn on critical questions and key assumptions to determine which ideas could be accelerated for launch. This 5-Day Innovation Pipeline Sprint has now set the bar across the organization for Jobs-based pipeline development.