Recently my Refreshment R&D Leadership Team met at Colworth for what was only our second face to face meeting this year. We maximized this invaluable opportunity to be together with an action packed agenda focusing on People and Talent, our R&D strategy, our Innovation agenda and key capabilities.
On day 1 we reviewed Regional Best practice with each Regional R&D Director sharing examples from their teams. This was incredibly valuable and learning will be taken & leveraged across the regions.
Key areas we’ll take forward are:
Knowledge based selling (KBS)- a very powerful way to differentiate and create excitement in the trade which we will drive at a global level for our Big Hits
Embedding a standard approach to measuring USLP progress
A strategic approach to complexity reduction – setting out our desired end state and measuring progress towards it
Quality – a number of examples of best practice to drive improvements were shared. We still have major issues around the challenge of IC through the Cold Chain and Roy Horne, appointed earlier this year, will drive best practice and repeatable models across the regions
We dedicated the afternoon to our people & talent agenda. This included identifying key roles across Refreshment and defining the experience & skills individuals would need to develop into these roles. We also identified how we develop the core technical expertise which builds the backbone of our organization.
Day 2 & 3 were dedicated to driving forward our Innovation agenda, looking critically at our innovation roadmaps through the different lenses of barriers to entry, return on assets, cash flow, project size & impact.
On ‘Barriers to Entry’, i.e., what can we do to stop our competitors copying us on our Big Hit projects, we covered how we can drive further a clearly articulated patent strategy around our key projects and technology. It’s critical we identify the key sources of competitive advantage & protect innovations via all routes available. The team reviewed the status of current metrics and will move on in November to the second ‘audit’ stage of the innovation funnel.
Reflecting on the Innovation agenda through the lens of Return on Assets (ROA) and cash flow, we worked together to raise our understanding of these financial measures, and will continue to do both ourselves and across the wider team. We also ran syndicates to ensure we drive more fully innovations that deliver positive ROA & cash flow, ‘sweating’ better the assets we have.
There’s been some brilliant work in developing 5 year innovation roadmaps, embedding our technology & maximizing it’s potential in terms of project size and market impact. Both Beverages and Ice Cream held deep dives in all key projects, assessing fit to benefit platforms, BIC demand and where the big unlocks are for the Discover team – with the BABE model (Be Amazing, Be Early) at heart at all times. The next step is to ensure the plans are operationalised down to country level to deliver perfect execution.
On the last day we looked at progress against some key initiatives such as Quality, PLM, Open Innovation and Packaging Excellence.
Despite our efforts we are not making the progress we’d like in Quality, meaning less reduction in consumer complaints than targeted. We agreed what we need to do differently to dial up results. With PLM we’ve made fabulous progress but still have some way to go in terms of data readiness to hit the Go Live for Ice Cream on 19th November. Project Endeavour will focus on delivering PLM for packaging, following a similar approach to Moonlander, with launch planned May 2015.
Lastly, touching on Open Innovation, we noted the power of scouting, particularly when we identify potential risks in a project, to learn about different fields to find possible solutions.
Overall, a rich meeting with valuable learning. To ensure success it will not be about doing new things, but enriching and leveraging what we already have, embedding best practice and organizing ourselves for delivery. My Directors will be picking up the actions within their teams - please connect with them to discuss any aspect of the agenda in more detail.