Campden BRI Survey Looks into Attitudes of Innovation

03 Mar 2017 --- Campden BRI have carried out an industry survey to better understand industry’s attitudes to innovation.

Some of the key findings were:

• Most companies plan to focus innovation on range extension and developing entirely new products over the next two years
• The majority of companies plan their innovation pipeline 9-12 months ahead
• Time and resource are the biggest barriers to innovation

Innovation areas
The majority of respondents said they will target innovation on extending their range (63%) and developing entirely new products (62%) over the next two years. Other common drivers of innovation were targeting new markets (50%), reformulating for health (43%) and cost saving (38%).

Planning the innovation pipeline
Over three quarters of respondents (78%) said they meet regularly as a team to discuss their innovation pipeline. Over a third of respondents planned their innovations up to 9 months ahead and slightly more (42%) planned 9-12 months ahead. Less than 20% planned more than one year ahead.

Barriers to innovation
Time (58%) and resource (60%) were the most common barriers to innovation. Almost a quarter of respondents (23%) said facilities were a barrier to innovation and 17% said generating ideas was an issue.

While all those surveyed said their company planned to innovate in at least one area over the next two years, only 28% said it was a top priority. Over half (55%) said innovation was in their company’s top five priorities.

Snap shot of industry
Campden BRI received 126 responses to the innovation survey from a wide range of sectors, including ambient groceries, baked products, beers wines and spirits, prepared convenience foods, and retailers. The responses represent a cross section of industry from multinationals1 (39%) and large companies2 (19%) to medium-sized companies3 (25%), small companies4 (17%) and start-ups (<1%).