With the IGNITE program, Symrise’s Taste, Nutrition & Health segment is reinventing the approach to innovation. The aim is to greatly accelerate the pace at which products and solutions are developed and commercialized in the future. To achieve this, a team of experts from all areas of the organization was put together to redesign a future-fit innovation model that complements existing successful mechanisms.

GOOD CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, INNOVATION AND DEVELOPMENT

“We have always been an innovative company,” says Nick Russell, “and now we are going further. With our IGNITE program, we aim to make our innovation approach even better.” The Briton is a member of the Leadership Team of Symrise’s Taste, Nutrition & Health segment and is now responsible for the innovation program that was launched in 2023 with the aim of further increasing Symrise’s growth and profitability. 

There are many reasons for introducing this new way of thinking and acting. “At the moment, the world is changing very rapidly – with a corresponding impact on consumers’ needs and wishes,” says Nick Russell. “Our customers expect us to deliver unique solutions that make a difference. They want to be able to use these solutions immediately, irrespective of whether they address sustainability issues, new product design challenges or trends such as vegan alternatives and natural foods.” At the same time, development is moving toward open innovation in collaboration with partners such as suppliers, customers and external experts – an approach that Symrise is also seeking to strengthen. Lastly, the company aims to break down information silos, connect unrelated innovation pipelines and make better use of its own resources.

“With our IGNITE program, we aim to make our innovation approach even better.”

Nick Russell,
Senior Vice President, Strategic Development & Business Incubation

To respond to customers’ wishes and, at the same time, be a first mover in other areas, Taste, Nutrition & Health must go down new paths. “It is important that IGNITE does not overturn those things that were already good but that we develop a complementary approach. We will continue to invest in proprietary design and new molecules,” says Nick Russell. That is why the Taste, Nutrition & Health segment launched IGNITE as a very open-ended initiative. The entire organization was involved and around 250 experts from all regions and functions were canvassed. The findings were then evaluated and analyzed. In the next step, a core team of around 60 employees devised a viable process. “We established four working groups to look at strategy, processes, implementation and finance,” explains Betty Fan, the IGNITE program lead. Throughout 2023, the team collaborated closely to deliver the design of our renewed approach.

“Working with the start-up’s founders, our colleagues developed and commercialized concepts in a very short time.”

Betty Fan,
Global Strategic Development Senior Director

The next phase of the program will be starting in 2024. Aptly named SPRINT, moving from the former IGNITE design phase, to the implementing and learning phase. It will collect and implement the first ideas. “It’s about being fast and agile and about shortening development times, which until now could take up to anywhere between 18 to 24 months,” says Betty Fan. Traditionally, we have used our own technologies to innovate on behalf of our major customers and we were highly successful. Now, a growing number of companies – including smaller ones – are coming to us with projects to implement with much shorter launch time expectations,” explains the program lead. One example of this are new beverage concepts such as the sustainable energy drinks from German start-up Holy, which are taking the market by storm thanks to their entirely natural fruit flavors and colorants, very low sugar content and the absence of taurine and extenders. Although these products were not created with the aid of IGNITE, this kind of collaboration is a great example of what we will be looking for more in the future. “The team met us via an innovation hub for food and beverage start-ups with which we cooperated closely,” says Betty Fan. “Working with the start-up’s founders, our colleagues developed and commercialized concepts in a very short time.” 

According to Nick Russell, speed is a crucial factor in success. “We have learned that we sometimes stay wedded to ideas for too long and try to translate them into products, even if markets, customers and trends have long since moved on. IGNITE is intended to change that. With IGNITE, we want to encourage people not to fall in love with their first ideas and to start getting more comfortable with ‘failure’ – as a very important step of the process,” says Russell. The aim is to continuously question the innovation process in a structured way to reduce the use of resources and achieve greater success rates. “Our priority is to focus on the right ideas,” says Russell. “It’s okay to make mistakes but we need to be faster at recognizing them.”

In the same way as the creation of IGNITE, implementation will involve employees from all regions and functions. “We aim to move from an organization structure-driven approach to a much more project-driven approach, and equip the project team with the best experts no matter where they sit. This will enable us to accelerate processes and view innovation from the perspective of the entire value chain,” says Betty Fan. This should yield service and process innovations as well as product innovations.

One especially important aspect of IGNITE is change and communication, a primary task for Kaylee Pretorius, change management practitioner for the program. One important point to emphasize is that this is not only a process change, but a cultural and mindset change. “Our team is committed to engaging and supporting all employees in this transformation”, says Kaylee Pretorius, who will be leading the communication materials and rollout campaign. “We are continuously learning where our employees stand and where the changes need to be communicated.” 

With support from the core team, events and training sessions are in motion to develop the future platform for innovation that will also be opened externally to customers and suppliers. “We will provide clearly defined channels that can be used to share and evaluate ideas before they are implemented,” says Kelvin Bartley, Global Project Management Officer for the program. Artificial intelligence and automation will be used to analyze the large data volumes and make them usable. 

IGNITE is to be introduced across the Taste, Nutrition & Health segment in the coming months. The team is collaborating with all the business units to achieve this and is also working on synergies with the Scent & Care segment. Taste, Nutrition & Health has an ambitious goal, as Nick Russell explains: “Our sales currently stand at around three billion. In the years ahead, innovation will be a critical enabler in contributing to growing the sales of products and services from innovation streams to a share of between 10 and 20 % – in addition to the innovations that we are already bringing to market.”

“Our team is committed to engaging and supporting all employees in this transformation.”

Kaylee Pretorius,
Manager of Strategic Planning and Growth Opportunity