How companies need to think like startups in order to innovate
According to McKinsey, by 2050 every company will be a health tech company, we tend to agree.
Personalised nutrition has the potential not only to reduce healthcare cost, it also has the potential to improve employee health, increase consumer satisfaction and engagement as well as solve food waste.
While the Personalised nutrition market is developing rapidly, we also see the number of "me-too" companies on the rise, so competition is fierce.
However, industry challenges remain, these include;
- Understanding the need to change
- Being consumer-centric
- Being agile and thinking like a Start-up
There are a number of approaches companies can take to overcome these challenges;
1. Understanding the need to change
In order to challenge the way that business has always been done, companies need to adapt to use data to their advantage to make informed decisions about what is happening and how factors impact on business goals or performance. Combining business analytics and data-science is the latest approach to unravel correlations or connections between different data points hidden within company data that is usually held in different formats and in separate departments.
2. Being truly consumer centric
A recent report by Accenture indicates that 54% of company data is currently “dark” meaning that it has not been analysed. With the rapid growth in IoT devices as well as wearables and sensor the amount of data collected globally will only grow and therefore companies should be able to make sense of all this information in order to innovate and create new products that consumers want.
Evolving into a personalized nutrition company will require a change in company cultural at all levels and therefore will need a well-defines strategy and action-plan to get it off the ground. In addition, all stakeholders will need to be on the same page in terms of their understanding of what personalized nutrition means and how the market is evolving and what technologies and services are available. This can be achieved easily through a workshop, a team building day or getting personalised nutrition external experts in to provide an update.
Too many times I hear lip service to being “consumer centric”, while it may mean different things to different people, here is my view; It means asking consumers what they want and need, it means engaging consumers at the idea conception stage, it means gathering feedback and constantly monitoring what they are saying about your brand, it means understanding the motivations for why consumers buy from you at a deeper level.
3. Become a data-informed company
Lastly data literacy at all levels will be important to ensure that all actions are informed by data and not led by it. After all, data needs to be put into the context of the market, the company and the employees. Any data strategy will be difficult to achieve if there is no cloud-based strategy in place to ensure that all stakeholders can access relevant information in real-time.
What companies can do;
Map the customer journey and at every step determine if you can add value and enhance the customer experience.
Again make sure that CRM data is factored into business performance analytics.
Innovate like a start-up
In order to become an agile personalised nutrition company it will require an entrepreneurial mindset and leadership skills from core staff. This is important not only to provide challenges but also to get out of the usual launching pipeline to behaving, thinking and leading like an entrepreneur.
Options include; developing a internal programme, organizing a 2 creativity& innovation day, creating a competition, or. The WEF recently reported that 90% of workforce will need to be re-skilled. These new skills include; creative thinking, analytics, creative problem solving and leading diverse teams. Whether you are design-thinking, using bio-design or creative problem solving, it is clear that in order to survive, a new way of thinking, behaving and innovating is needed.
Partnering with start-up offering products and services
For companies to stay abreast and evolve into personalised nutrition companies, it is important to understandt the competitive landscape in Personalised nutrition. Startups are closer to the consumer and have an agile approach to solving problems. Partnering with a startup can open access to new customers, provide important consumer insights and provide new ideas for new product innovation.