Global consumer goods company: Moving a stalled innovation across the enterprise

1 min read

Prioritisation Systems

A research team at one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies had spent 12 years developing industry-leading biodegradable packaging, and was completely stuck, unable to get the rest of the business behind it. We helped the team win over senior leaders across the company and secure the chief executive’s direct backing, advancing the program by one to two years.

Outcome 1: A stalled 12-year innovation advanced by one to two years
Outcome 2: 46 senior executives across global markets won over and aligned behind it
Outcome 3: The chief executive committed publicly to the initiative and sponsored it directly

The challenge

A research team at one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies had spent 12 years developing industry-leading biodegradable packaging, and was completely stuck. In this company, strategy and budgets were driven by sales and marketing: if they did not own an initiative, it went nowhere. The research team had no credible way across that divide, and the innovation risked being shelved for good.

Left where it was, a 12-year, strategically important innovation would stay locked inside the research function, never reaching the wider business, never influencing the chief executive, and never capturing the tens of billions in market value the technology represented.

The approach

Working with the 12-person research team, we surfaced the hidden belief holding them back: that the company’s decision-making was simply too complex to navigate. Once that was in the open, the team could see another way. Alongside them, we designed and practiced the conversations needed to win people over, which the team then held directly with senior leaders across marketing, finance and global regions, eventually securing the chief executive’s engagement.

The impact

The program, stalled for 12 years, advanced by one to two years. 46 senior executives across global markets were won over and aligned behind it, and the chief executive committed publicly and sponsored it directly. The company was positioned to lead a global sustainable-packaging market worth tens of billions, and for the first time, different functions across the enterprise aligned on a single shared innovation.