The Consumer Goods Forum’s Emerging Trends/Future Value Chain project included input from more than 200 consumer goods and retail executives and involved a three-step process:
1. Conduct a trends analysis to qualify the most relevant trends and then narrow down those that will have the greatest impact on the industry.
2. Dig deeper into these trends and translate them into initiatives for collaborative action by the industry.
3. Develop supporting action plans to address these initiatives.
CGF engaged Capgemini and Roland Berger to facilitate the process.
Phase 1: Trends Analysis and Prioritization
To develop an initial list of relevant, long-term trends Roland Berger conducted desk research involving more than 200 trend studies from leading research institutes, NGOs and think tanks, including the earlier “Future Value Chain” reports of The Consumer Goods Forum. The list was long, so the next step was to prioritize these trends. CEOs and their strategic teams
from both consumer goods manufacturers and retailers provided their views via an online survey that considered both trend relevance and business impact for the industry. Following the survey, CGF conducted working sessions to define the areas for the development of collaborative industry
action. This led to the selection of the five megatrends. In addition, a gap analysis was conducted to determine whether the five megatrends were already being addressed by the other CGF pillars. This resulted in the selection of Digital World and Fight for Resources.
Phase 2: From Ideas to Initiatives
In the second phase CGF dug deeper into these two selected megatrends and identified corresponding initiatives that could be acted upon collaboratively by the industry. CGF selected
Capgemini to help facilitate this phase. Capgemini and CGF have a longstanding relationship working together on the “Future Value Chain” project and other activities focused on key industry issues.
Online social crowdsourcing technology was used to capture new and additional ideas from industry executives and experts over a three-week period. The campaign involved 107 participants from 23 companies who generated 32 ideas on Digital World and 27 ideas on Fight for Resources. The ideas were sorted by popularity, added value (to the industry and its surrounding stakeholders) and feasibility, resulting in the down-selection of seven ideas.
Following the crowd sourcing exercise, Capgemini conducted a facilitated workshop with industry executives and experts from other sectors (e.g., chemical, manufacturing and IT industry,
consultants and other organizations such as the World Economic Forum and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development) to further qualify these seven ideas. Capgemini Consulting’s Accelerated Solutions Environment (ASE) DesignSession format was chosen for the workshop. The workshop was attended by 31 participants from 18 CGF member companies.
The first stage of the workshop focused on achieving a common understanding of the two megatrends and reviewing and assessing the ideas from the crowdsourcing program. In the second stage the ideas were narrowed down, validated against existing CGF activities and translated into initiatives for the final work round. The process resulted in the selection of
the three initiatives:
• Consumer Engagement Protocol: develop a code of conduct for digital engagement with consumers
• Next-Generation Product Identification: transform product identification and information
• Sustainable Packaging Consortium: improve the sustainability of packaging across the different value chain stages