In this episode I had the chance to catch up with Dr Angeline Achariya, who has had a successful technology transfer journey moving across industry and the innovation sector throughout her career. With her formative years spent on the land in Fiji and in Queensland, she moved into agribusiness starting at Mrs Crockett’s then moving through Mars and Fonterra to where her executive career took route with Yum! Brands and subsequently Mondelez International. Ange then moved to Monash University to lead what she started at Mondelez, before moving back to the private sector with Simplot and now in her portfolio career journey.
We explore what innovation looks like in different organisations and brand environments. We touch on the world of Quick Service Restaurants and the challenge of tech transfer with a younger workforce. We explore in some detail innovation at Mondelez and the establishment of the Monash Food Innovation Centre. This was established in 2013 and was an early Australian forerunner in developing industry, research, government agrifood clusters. Ange took me through some of the approaches taken and the importance of listening to what industry wanted from the emerging entity – an “outside in” rather than “inside out” approach.
In establishing the Centre, Ange describes some of the concerns and cultural challenges that emerged. We touch on SME concerns around partnering and sharing IP, why Monash University and differing perspectives around risk between the founding parties, including the Victorian Government. We discuss the importance of securing a mandate to get on with things and some of the associated governance dynamics. Here risk management and perception were managed through a “no surprises” approach and developing an understanding of the boundaries of involved parties. The rate of change of partner ecosystems also offered some interesting connections back to our recent discussions with David Thodey (in Episode 34) and Andy Shafer (in Episode 36) around culture and clock speeds.
We wrap our discussion with the introduction of the “of getting sticky with customers” and the importance of building relationships through which partners engage over the longer term. Ange also notes that innovation isn’t formulaic and that the same approach cannot be applied in all circumstances. Purpose, Strategy, Culture, Risk Appetite and Capability among the partners and within the broader ecosystem also shape approaches to innovation and tech transfer. We finish our discussion talking about the need for resilient sustainability and solving the right problems for the right customer to create new value.
Transcript
CB: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Tech Transfer Talk. My name is Cameron Begley. Joining me today is Ange Achariya and just got a fantastic pedigree in the agrifood innovation space, starting her time through her career at Mrs Crockett’s in Brisbane and then a number of roles with multinationals through Mars, Fonterra, Yum! Brands, Mondelez, and then time at Simplot, before establishing her own organisation. Ange has also been recently appointed on Australia’s Economic Accelerator Board. And we welcome her to join the show. Ange, hello.
AA: Hello, Cam. How are you today?
CB: Very well. Thank you so much for joining us. I have been looking forward to talking with you, and getting a bit more of your views and perspectives on what’s happening in ag and food innovation.
AA: Ah, the stuff that I love talking about. Thank you for having me on board today.
CB: That’s quite all right. Ange, how on earth did you get into ag innovation—of all the things you could have chosen to do with your life? How did you get into this?
AA: How did I get into—let’s call it agrifood innovation. I think…
CB: We can call it that.
AA: Yeah, I think, well, it started when I was young, and, you know, I used to—I grew up in Fiji, so I’m, my parents migrated to Australia for a better life for themselves and their children. And I remember very vividly spending a lot of my childhood school holidays, at my grandparent’s farms. And they were sugarcane plantations, you know, growers. And so, a lot of my holidays and school holidays, I’d just be kind of, shipped over there. And I’d spend lots of time with my cousins and my aunties and my uncles. I spent my formative years in Fiji. My parents left when I was about ten and moved over to Australia. My dad was also an agriculturist and a horticulturist, so I guess that would have had quite a tremendous influence on what I ended up studying. And, of course, being part of agriculture shows and used to take my little chicken to win little awards and things like that. And, you know, it was fun, fun growing up in that place.
CB: Yeah. So, what then threw you into the path of big brand food, which I think is where your early career took root, wasn’t it? And at some point, ended up at Mondelez, if memory serves.
AA: Yes. Yeah. So very much, sort of studied food, ended up only ever wanted to work in industry—only because I was probably, I’m probably that way inclined, as in, very fast paced, highly action orientated. And I wanted to see outcome and impact. Right. So, I actually started very early in my career. Would you believe in a small and medium enterprise—that was Mrs. Crockett’s up in Brisbane. So, creating fresh cut salads and innovation in that space, a very much in that whole primary produce and seeing how you could turn that into value-add. And maybe that’s where a lot of my insights sort of started. I then moved to, I wouldn’t want to give you my CV, but moved to Mars in the world of pet food and worked in Japan and China and Southeast Asia, and then went into the dairy world with Fonterra. And basically, worked around, across innovation, not just in ANZ but across Asia and APNEA, if you will, in the region. And then, from dairy, I went into Yum! Brands, which is the home of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. So very different. And I was creating innovations there and had a whole team, and that’s when my whole executive career in innovation really started. After that was Mondelez, where I basically did something quite crazy but unbelievable for my career, which was co-founded the Food Innovation Centre, which then I moved across to Monash University. So, that was then a stint in a university environment. And I have lots of stories to share there as well.
CB: Okay. No. Well, that’s a good place to catch your breath, actually, I think, Ange, because you’ve covered all the food groups there. Well, we have covered protein with dairy, of course. So, we’ve covered carbohydrates and dairy, and at the risk of being a bit controversial, Yum! Brands would well and truly cover the fat category. So, you’ve pretty much covered the macros, which is fantastic. But that movement into the executive role in fast food. What does innovation look like for Yum! Brands? As you point out, they are non-trivial brands, in Taco Bell and KFC and the like. So, what does innovation look like there? Is it brand extension, line extension, incremental innovation, which is completely relevant to the world? Or were you looking at profound shifts in the way you did things or the ingredients or processes and things? What’s that innovation look like in Yum!?
AA: Innovation. And I think this is interesting. And we’ll probably delve into a little bit about how we define innovation, because it means very much different things to different people as well. So, in the context of Yum!, it was very much renovation. I mean, you walk into a KFC, and what are you looking for? You’re looking for a better burger, a tastier sauce in there, a cut of chicken, different snacks. So, a lot of the innovation was around certainly product, productisation and product SKUs. There was a lot of innovation we did around the menu board and how you would actually design your menu board, both at the drive-through as well as at the counter as well. And part of that was how, as foot traffic comes in, how are they listening and reading it very, very quickly so they can make the right choices. There was innovation in the process side. So, looking at faster times because at the end of the day, a quick service restaurant or QSR is all about the value and it’s about how fast you go through that, right, because that consumer is not waiting. There’s a reason why they’re coming through that drive-through and in terms of what they’re after. So, it’s about actually making sure that you can execute something very quickly. And it’s a 15-year-old usually doing that assembly of your product right there, operating a machine, or an oven, or whatever else. So how quickly could you do that? The other innovation was also with our suppliers, Cam. So, one of the big initiatives that we did when I was at Yum! with brand KFC was he change from sustainable palm oil to high oleic canola oil for frying.
CB: Ah, okay.
AA: And you can imagine that was significant because all of a sudden you went from something that you got as solid palm that you had to melt. There was a whole process behind in the back of house to now going to liquid oil. How would you handle it? How would you train up your staff as well? From a supplier side, it was high oleic canola, so not just your regular canola, and you had to really work with suppliers who would, and farmers who would be willing to grow that. And then also work with the intermediaries around taking that canola and milling and processing it, to get it into the oil that we needed for our restaurants as well.
CB: Very different types of innovation that you described there, from menu boards through to actually changing raw materials and the practices that come with it. So, as you touched on there, innovation has lots of different meanings and different definitions. And when it comes to tech transfer, which is what we tend to talk about, the amount of tech transfer involved is also different as a consequence of the type of innovation we’re dealing with. It’s interesting, so, the Yum! Brands experience then has you heading off to Mondelez to set up the Food Centre at Monash along the way. What were you looking for as Mondelez? Why do that? I mean, you’re a global company. You’ve got connections all around the world. Why—Why Monash and why Australia? What was it that was being sought there?
AA: I think I described it as the crazy thing I did…
CB: Indeed, you did describe it as that earlier.
AA: But it was the best experience that I can, if I sit back and I reflect on, and look, we went in not knowing that the destination would eventually become a university. So, I basically had, I joined Mondelez, and they took me on to be the general manager for this initiative, which was basically a joint venture between Mondelez International and the Victorian Government. So, I had a pot of money. I had three years to effectively show the food manufacturing sector in the State of Victoria on how they could create a brighter future. That was it. And a blank sheet of paper. And it was very early on, I think now we hear of cluster models, we hear of hubs and ecosystem models and things like that. That is what we were creating in 2013 in Melbourne, Cam, right. And little did I know that that’s what the label would be, but it was basically an opportunity to bring together industry. And it was small and medium and big food and retailers. It was researchers. So, universities, research organisations like CSIRO. It was government. All coming together to actually co-create. Firstly, identifying what are the big key problems to solve the big pain points, along with the pleasure points and then co-create together what could be the outcomes. And literally we went from everything in the talent space to upskilling and building capability, to looking at export pathways into Southeast Asia and China for premium food products. We looked at how to fast track your innovation to market, because speed is the key, in the space that we sit in industry and with fast moving consumer goods. And then we also looked at how do you build capability, how do you build innovation capability with small and medium enterprises, smaller organistions who wouldn’t have the resources like a giant Mondelez would have and capabilities, so how would we do something like that? And you can imagine I was met with everything like ‘Why is Mondelez doing this? Why do you guys want to do that? Are you going to steal my ideas? What does it do to you?’ And all of that. And it was purely altruistic to the industry and the sector. Of course, Mondelez’s benefit was they all of a sudden had some brilliant minds that I was able to bring together, that was able to really help fast track Mondelez‘s innovation pipeline and funnel as well and introduce new capability that they didn’t have as well. So, it was a little, it was a bit of everybody kind of won. And we created this model, that at the end of three years, everybody who came and introduced the capability of the model, and of course, we couldn’t charge because as Mondelez we’re in the business of selling chocolates and candy, not innovation services. And hence, you know, when talking with the exec back then it was like, ‘Well, what where do we want this to go?’ And essentially industry had a very strong voice that they said to us, ‘If you create this and make it into an innovation service model, we will come and use you’. So, we listened to what our potential customers wanted.
CB: Heaven forbid, listening to customers for what they want. This is an outrageous notion, Ange. But obviously, the right thing to be doing, particularly in innovation, where, and we’ve contended in other conversations we’ve had on the podcast, that innovation need to be more outside-in than inside-out. And if you’re talking to industry, of which you obviously are a part, but if you’re talking to industry and those who are likely to consume the innovation or take up the innovation, then that’s an outside-in model. So, you then stepped in to manage what you created.
AA: Yes. Yeah. So, I went…
CB: It shows a certain amount of confidence that you had got the model working well and that you were prepared to follow what you had built.
AA: Correct. Well, at least it was a litmus test, right. Now, the ‘proof was in the pudding’ that people would actually come to us and pay for our smarts, for our services and what we could offer to companies. And they did, they did—4,500-odd clients, three years later, Cameron.
CB: Yeah. So, then what was different between life at Mondelez and life at Monash? So, what were some of the, and I’m interested in the cultural dynamics primarily, because being in industry, you have a focus which is towards the customer, the paying customer, profitability, you know, the brand and the sustainability of the company. Monash might be a bit different. I’m interested in the cultural differences you noticed.
AA: Absolutely, happy to share that. And don’t forget, there’s another cultural element, of which is the government.
CB: Yes, indeed. I think that’s an excellent third piece of the puzzle.
AA: Let me kind of share that sort of, I guess private versus public or industry versus academia and research. I think from a cultural perspective, firstly, we were very different, and they were very different, as in the university, right? So, there was a little bit of, ‘Oh, we’re scared of you, and you’re scared of us’, right? The thing was, going into Monash, and I think this was probably a really good way to do it on reflection, was Monash essentially left us alone for the first two and a half years. So as CEO, my role was to get this thing going. There was an underwriting and therefore de-risking the model between Mondelez, Monash and the Government. But also, I had a remit. The remit was how do you get to a self-sustainable model at the end of that two and a half years? So that was, we basically had a time ticking from the moment where before we even arrived and landed in Monash. And so that meant that we could really focus. We had the support of the university, from an admin, it was everything from how do clients and customers even find us in this big campus, right? You know, it’s the thing that actually is, can be a roadblock for many, many companies. And there were some companies we used to get complaints all the time. It was about invoicing lots and lots of little companies. And how would the payment structure actually come about? It was about confidentiality agreements, rather than the typical university kind of, and service model agreements, which were very, very new, and different. So, we created some very new things. We really nudged people’s thinking in the way of they were used to doing and to try and do different things. We didn’t like, expect everything to be done for us. So, we basically co-created. And I think that really helped in the relationship building, the trust, and they saw us as people who just roll their sleeves and got things done, right, and hounded if it didn’t happen. So, from a cultural perspective, I think one of the big things was around pace and time. The pace that we had to act at—not act at actually—be at, because industry, I’d get a call from, say, a Chobani, and they needed an innovation ideation session or a pipeline in a couple of days. I needed to be able to turn that around.
CB: Right. So that time issue there that you mentioned is, or the speed issue there is, that you wanted the Innovation Centre to move much more quickly and much more, be much more fleet of foot than Monash or perhaps a big corporate. You actually needed flexibility and I’m fascinated by how you got your mandate. The money was put in the bank, so to speak, with the underwriting of the finance. And so, you were basically allowed to get on with it for two and a half years. Which is a model which gets spoken of often, I think, in the corporate venturing space, where you want to finance something and then don’t mess with it. And then, just put your equity position in and then just let it ferment at its own speed. Don’t try and crush it with the corporate governance that might come with a larger multinational. And it sounds like that model sort of played out here a little bit that you were allowed to find your feet. And then if you were successful, you were and if you weren’t, then you probably would have been wound up or moved into a different…
AA: Absolutely, you know, multiple pathways or whatever. And it was a very similar model in Mondelez as well, in terms of, we were let to do what we had to do. But of course, you were held to account. So, it’s not like you are forgotten. So, as you know, the GM in Mondelez, I was held to account to a steering co, and I had to come back and report on a timely manner. It was the same back in Monash as well, to making sure that we were delivering to the outcomes and so, and making sure that all my stakeholders were coming on the journey with me, and there were multiple stakeholders and very complex stakeholders, as you can imagine.
CB: Indeed, indeed. And before we get on to that complex stakeholder being government, I think it’s just important to catch that point you made there around governance. So, just because you were sitting away from the day-to-day of Monash and Mondelez and allowed to grow the Centre, it doesn’t mean it was governance free. You still had to go and report to a board or to a steering co, I think you called it there, Ange, and it’s not like, ‘Oh, we’ll see you in three years and hopefully you’ll have done something, and some money… I think that’s an important nuance because sometimes people think, ‘Oh, I just got the money, and I run’.
AA: No definitely not. And then where’s the accountability?
CB: Yeah. No. Absolutely, Ange, we’re all for accountability and responsibility.
AA: What I can reflect on is the model that I led. And because we came from industry, we were very commercially driven. And we had that, we needed to see the commercial impact of the value that we were creating for company X, Y, whatever in the work that we were doing, even when we were doing training. What was the outcome from our capability building as well? So, that was innate in all of the team. And remember, this was a team. Some of them were in Mondelez, others we hired along the way, but they were all from industry.
CB: Yeah, a very, a very telling point. I think that there’s that strong outside-in orientation when doing these things. I do want to just quickly touch back on your other complex stakeholder, which I think may be a euphemism for government. And I, just interested, you know, government obviously pump prime the innovation system, right across this country, one could argue right across the world, every jurisdiction has a good lick of government money in it, to a greater or lesser extent. How did government’s role in all of this play out, both positively and perhaps, not so positively? I’m interested to touch on government here when we look at it through the risk appetite lens. So, when we talk about risk in innovation, an immediate focus perhaps goes to the bench and the technology and we talk about ‘Oh my goodness’, you know, ‘this is a bit edgy or a bit different’, etc., etc. Then we talk about the commercial risk side of it and bringing a new product, current market, new markets, etc. And the risk settings of the private sector and the research sector are, I think, reasonably well described, but the government risk settings are typically intrinsically different and run on a different time horizon to industry and to the research community. How did you find meshing the different risk appetites and the preparedness to sit with uncertainty around what you were doing? How did you find those three things?
AA: Yeah. Look for me, I’m a cat that thrives in uncertainty. So, it was fine, right?
CB: But perhaps government is not.
AA: No, you’re right, you’re right. And therefore, it was actually just like anything, any stakeholder kind of management or relationship building, is understanding the boundaries that you can operate in. And what is that level of appetite, right. And once I was able to determine that for government for university and the organisation I was at, it was basically working through and seeing how you could manage all of those three to deliver the outcomes that were important. And of course, some things were more important in the government realm than in the Mondelez realm than in the university realm right. So, how would you package up something? How would you communicate that clearly? And ensuring that you were always checking in frequently with your stakeholders rather than you do it at the start, and then they don’t hear anything from you until you come back and go ‘Ta da!’
CB: Yeah, indeed. So, and one phrase that does pop up in governance circles, of course, is ‘no surprises’. Me being in Canberra, for those that don’t know the capital of Australia and the home of the federal government, ‘no surprises’ is a very important mantra in this part of the world. People don’t like surprises. Clearly, though, I think you’ve stumbled onto, or not stumbled onto, that’s perhaps doing you a disservice, I think what you’ve described there is understanding the boundary of the partners involved around risk appetite is a really interesting insight, because in any innovation that gets undertaken and the technology transfer that comes along with it, there are different stakeholders with different risk appetites. And being able to articulate and work within boundaries and communicating in a way that fits in those boundaries, I think it’s a very, very good insight. And I suspect you learnt that that was forged in the crucible from time to time. That learning, is you are juggling these three sets of perspectives.
AA: I can certainly say, Cam, there were many mistakes that I made that I learned from very quickly…
CB: Okay.
AA: To get to that realisation and that way of working. But, and you know, something that I’ve then taken beyond into my other roles as well. But it’s a continuous process. And I think, some of the times you, even if I’ve been in my corporate roles, people will go, ‘Oh, let’s bring the RASCI out’ and we’ll do it at a certain point of the start of the project, at the end of the project. ‘Guys, you know, that’s just a tool’. You’ve got to be having the conversations all the time, the check-ins, and all of that. And we work in ecosystems and ecosystems change and shift all the time.
CB: They do.
AA: And people take on different roles, all the time, right. The worst thing we can do is actually then make assumptions. And that assumption is the same as what you had heard or had conversations six months ago or even a week ago. The pace of change is so fast these days, so you’ve got to continuously, I guess, yes, have some hypotheses, have some assumptions, but keep checking those.
CB: Yeah. I think it’s an interesting point around ecosystem change. And the rate of change is quite different in the different groupings.
AA: I think because of this change of pace, right. And I think nowhere more is that more important. But even, as I went from industry to university and back into industry again, so, I’ve seen that innovation on both sides. And I think one of the things that I really, if I step back and I go, there’s still this huge opportunity, I think, in our country to get industry and academia and research connected better. And you’ve spent a lot of time in this space, right? But if you look at our massive macro, economic shifts that are happening, our big planetary challenges, no one can solve that themselves. And we also need to not just think about the short-term, but the medium- and the long-term. So, I think the universities are in a great place to bring a lot of that foresight-led thinking a little bit to industry, because industry can sometimes be very short for its own good.
CB: In fact, Ange, we spent a bit of time talking about this with David Thodey a few episodes back, around this notion of getting corporate and the research communities a little bit better integrated. And the clock speed issue that I think you just touched on there around, corporate run at a different speed. And it was very interesting. In another recent conversation, one of our guests was Andy Schafer; he spoke about stopwatches and calendars.
AA: If I go back to really that, how do we strengthen the connection between university and industry? I think for me, it has to be the role university and research can play in the medium- to long- erm and let industry do the short-term, right. Let industry do the short-term. They’re great at that. So, how does research bring more of a foresight, assigns a tech-led approach to creating new value. You know, they know they can help.
CB: An interesting conundrum you’ve just stumbled into, Ange, which is, if industry does the short-term and the research community, the medium- to long-term, the challenge is how do you be outside-in on medium- to long-term research?
AA: You have to co-create that. It’s not in isolation.
CB: Ah, okay, right.
AA: There’s nothing that I ever do in isolation. So, it has to be co-created.
CB: So, figuring out where the puck is going to be in 5 or 10 years, is a really, I think, sits at the heart of the conundrum…
AA: Absolutely.
CB: For R&D.
AA: Yeah. And it’s got to be with the organisation strategy. Or, you know, if they don’t have that far thinking, how do you influence that? All of that is absolutely critical. So, nothing in isolation is actually working together in partnerships or co-creation, whatever you want to call it, Cam. That for me is really important. I think the other thing, that you can become, in industry, we say, ‘How do you get sticky with your customer?’ So, how does the university get sticky with industry? I think is around that talent and upskilling. Particularly when you think about, GNI now and other things, AI. How do, how can you very quickly upskill people who are in industry, right, who don’t have all the time to go and learn these things? Universities are great environments to do that.
CB: You’ve gone into customer retention models and…
AA: Oh, my mind thinks customer and consumer first because at the end of the day, who are calling that value creation for.
CB: Of course. I must say Ange, we’ve been doing this podcast, little short of three years, and you’re the first person to mention sticky customers.
AA: No way.
CB: So, I think that, but I think that’s okay. So, I think you’ve introduced a bit of jargon from another world, and it’s absolutely right. Of course, you want your customers to stick around you. We have to frame that in a different way. And we’ve talked about relationships. And those relationships create the stickiness, I think, to which you just referred. Because the relationships are the foundation upon which transactions are built. If you just focus on the transaction, your stickiness probably drops. At this juncture, Ange, so you’re completely ensconced in the world of Monash. You’ve got this Centre up and firing and boom—you’re off to Simplot. What happened?
AA: For me, what I had set out to do, which was a CEO of the Food Innovation Centre, get it to a point that I was proud of its momentum and what I had achieved. And that’s what I did. You know, I got it to self-sustainability in two and a half years. I left the team with a three-year contract, negotiated back with the university, in terms of how this could go beyond the underwriting of the risk in the first two and a half years. That is one place that is still running today, 11 years on, Cam. So, I’m pretty proud of that.
CB: That’s great.
AA: You tell me. I have a model out there that started with money from government and whatever else and are still surviving, and it’s surviving of its own back, really because of the model that we created, right. So, for me, I think it was, you always get to a point in your life where you go, ‘Right, have I done what I set out to do?’—without knowing what I was setting out to do. “And do I feel proud of the legacy that I’m leaving behind?’ And that was important. And at that point in my life and my career, I was pretty proud of the legacy that I was going to leave behind. So, I was looking for my next challenge, and that’s the kind of person I am. And the challenge was with Simplot, was to come in and kind of help grow and transform innovation in Simplot Australia. And that’s the remit that was given to me. And I sort of set about doing that, the last four and a bit years in the middle of a pandemic striking as well, which kind of threw everything up in the air. But, I mean, there were so many different things. And I can certainly, I think one thing that I have learnt along, going into different organisations, and transforming or resetting and are growth agendas, through innovation, it’s never the same formula that is applied, right. It’s never the same formula. And I think that is important because I have seen many peers go and do the same thing. And then you wonder why it doesn’t work. And for me, what I’ve learned is, it’s important to understand the purpose of the organisation, the strategy of the organisation, the culture, the risk appetite, and the capability. These things are critical.
CB: That’s a good shopping list for due diligence in any situation, really.
AA: Absolutely. And then you need to bespoke because, again it’s a new ecosystem with different people, with different roles, with different appetites for risk, right. So, and then the other big thing is always I’ve found is you’ve got to define innovation. Because it means, again, different things, even within industry, it means different things. It’s not like all of industry will say, ‘Cam, this is what I mean by innovation’, right. And if everything from renovation through to disruptive business models and all in between. So, for me it’s, innovation is value generation. It has to be profitable and sustainable.
CB: Yeah. So, so it’s interesting, there are very different definitions of innovation. And I’d be interested to just diverge slightly into the tech transfer challenges that come with all of that. So, a lot of the conversation around innovation, I feel it’s really easy to focus on the really interesting science, discovery, engineering. We got something to work. And earlier on, when you were talking about some of the work you did, I think it was with the canola, moving from palm to canola, and there you’ve actually got, in some ways perhaps simple, but in many ways quite complicated form of tech transfer, where you’re moving a system from a solid starting point to a liquid, and you’ve got a whole lot of people to train and a whole lot of people to have to change behavior. So, I’m really interested in just a bit of a snapshot from your view around agribusiness tech transfer. Because agribusiness innovation covers everything from notionally genetically modifying plants and animals, all the way through to preparing that food and delivering it differently and everything in between. What are some of the learnings that you think you’ve had, or observations rather than learnings, perhaps, around how this tech transfer piece fits in? Because the science is all well and good, but then the really tough stuff gets onto us, which is ‘change’.
AA: I agree. I think, one of my observations would be, is sometimes I’ve been the recipient of tech transfer when it comes, when it comes, it’s almost like a ‘Ta Da!’ Where has been that customer insight early on in that piece? I’m again, go back to—you’ll get sick of me, but co-creation is the way that I would see this, right. I think if there’s an opportunity to identify your customers right early on and bring them into that journey, you’re much, much more better getting that stickiness—let’s use that word again—and adoption. And the willingness to actually evolve and change and adopt this, than you are if you’re coming in. And if you’re coming in sort of cold, I think there’s always the, the clear things of—back to time again—how can this tech, or if I adopt it, actually improve my current process, drive efficiency, increase productivity, give me more revenue? Right. And if you can’t show that in X amount of months or whatever the time that organisation might say, then you are still going to be trying to sell that thing in. Where I’ve seen it work well, is in the innovation space when you have a portfolio approach to your innovation. And by that, I mean, where you have your short-term, so, in the world of FMCG, that’s your renovation line extension; your medium-term, which can be your expansive innovation, so, it’s a, and then your long-term, which is your disruptive. And that is innovation, not just the widget or the what, but it’s actually business model innovation as well. And I see in the organisations that I’ve been where I’ve led innovation, there is then an opportunity to bring in some of this, because you could introduce it at that medium- to long-term and then work yourself along that journey as well.
CB: Ange, it has been great having you on the show today and just hearing a little bit about, not only the journey you’ve been on, but some of the insights that you’ve shared around these ecosystems and the constant recalibrating in the communication. A theme which is, I think, perhaps not emphasised enough when it comes to tech transfer, but that’s a story for another time. Ange, just as we wrap up, are there any closing thoughts that you might have or insights you’d like to share?
AA: I think one of the things is, we are living, and we’re operating in this highly, highly uncertain time. It’s not going to go back to what we thought was normal. So, I think get out of that, right, and I think, time now for organisations to really think about resilient sustainability. And when I talk about sustainability, I’m not just talking about the environment, I’m talking about sustainable business models…
CB: Sustainable businesses.
AA: All of those things. I think we also need to make sure that we can balance our portfolio of innovation, because the first thing when a business is going through a tough time, like inflation and all of those things that our companies are currently experiencing, the first thing that gets the chop is innovation.
CB: Isn’t it just.
AA: And it’s, and that is the time that leaders need to make sure they’re focusing on, both for today and for tomorrow. And really asking the questions about what are the problems to solve for your customers, right. I talked about getting sticky with your customers. But we don’t always ask ourselves, ‘Are we solving for the right problems? Are we solving for the right customer? And are we generating those value pools that we need?’ And then we need to make sure we’ve got the right talent, the right process, and the systems that are enablers to make sure that we continue to generate value.
CB: Ange, I think that is a terrific closing set of thoughts, because at the end of the day, we did touch on the outside-in notion of innovation and being focused on customers. You’ve introduced ‘stickiness’ to us, and I think sticky customers will be one of our catchphrases in the future. But it’s been terrific rolling through, not only the extraordinary things that you’ve been up to over your journey, but also how you’ve brought all that together in interviews around innovation and the reflections you’ve had on agrifood in Australia. Ange, thanks very much for joining us.
AA: Oh, thank you, Cam. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Thank you too.