The innovation council of a world-leading food company chartered a new initiative to find transformative business opportunities enabled by biotechnology platforms. The team was chartered to seek out opportunities at the confluence of existing divisional business units.

In the past, the company’s multi-billion dollar business divisions struggled with opportunities that spanned business units. Biotechnology had become a major strategic focus for the company and leadership realized that a strong biotech competency required development of cross-BU platforms.

Service
Discovery
Industry
Food & Agriculture

By the Numbers

Together, we produced the following outcomes
  • 0 Ecosystem Engagements
  • 0 Biotech Domains
  • 0 Plus Opportunity Concepts
  • 0 Final Opportunities

What We Did Together

This was a major corporate initiative for the client. They assigned 12 people (including the program manager) to work on this project. Inovo had three people assigned to the project. Together they did the following:

  • Utilized Inovo’s iterative deepening learning methodology to take the 15-member team through a complete opportunity discovery journey
  • Undertook broad biotech ecosystem engagement to uncover deep knowledge and unique insights
  • Used portfolio design tools to reduce 70 opportunity concepts to 12 winners.

The Outcome

The entire project took place over seven (7) months (1.5 months Domaining and 5.5 months Discovery) and resulted in the following:

  • Identified 10 strategic domains of interest which were subsequently explored for strategic opportunities.
  • Twelve opportunities were created: 3 funded immediately, 6 in discussion and 3 deemed too risky.
  • Two (2) of the platforms have been commercially launched and another four (4) are in the later stages of incubation

I haven't seen the I-Council as excited about a group of well-formed concepts... ever. We literally couldn't sit down when we were deliberating about which opportunities to fund

Brandon Rowberry , Director Innovation Council

United Health Group

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