Staying Innovative In The Beverage Industry
4 KEYS TO HELP STAY INNOVATIVE
Product innovation in the beverage space is crucial to business success, growth, profitability, and extension. While it seems like innovative ideas are widespread everywhere, there are several challenges to overcome on the road to bringing a new beverage idea to market. Some of the obstacles beverage innovators face include:
- A highly competitive market
- Fluctuating pricing
- Intense price competition
- Constant shifts in consumer demand and trends
- Increasing changes in the regulatory environment
In defiance of the challenges and difficulties, beverage innovation is still waxing stronger. In 2019, the three food categories with the most significant shares of overall new product introductions were beverages, snacks, and confectionery foods. Here are the fundamental principles that helped beverage companies bring successful new concepts to life.
Adopt an Innovation Mindset
Most of the biggest setbacks to innovation exist in the mind. Believing we have all the solutions and answers, repeating old patterns of thinking, and resisting change can make new ideas decay, and hence bring all the whole creative process to a halt. An innovative mindset is one of openness and creativity combined with curiosity and courage to explore the unknown. Innovators are resilient, they aren’t afraid to put big ideas out there, get feedback, make decisions, and keep moving forward.
Some practical steps for grooming a more innovative mindset include challenging your assumptions, consistently asking questions your rivals aren’t asking embracing, practicing brainstorming. Confidence is another essential feature of an innovative mindset. Believe in yourself and your team and what you intend to put out. Always Remember that creativity and innovation are not in-born skill; you can cultivate, and continuously improve on them with practice over time.
Know your Customer
The most successful beverages start with an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the audience they want to communicate to. It’s more than just making assertions with just intuitive knowledge. Innovators invest plenty of time and effort in gathering quantitative and qualitative data about their target market. Understanding your market and the problem you’re solving for them is the backbone of successful product innovation. Use research, interviews, listening sessions, and feedback from customers to guide your approach.
Create Strong Partnerships
In the fast-paced world of beverage innovation, a “to act by ones self without assistance” approach isn’t the best growth method regardless of your big plans that are in view. Collaboration allows you to harness others’ strengths and abilities to scale your innovation process to solve new and complex challenges. Leaning into your core strengths, assessing your gaps, and supplementing them with wisdom and experience outside your company can move your idea forward faster and more efficiently than you could just on your own. Working collaboratively with partners generates energy that fuels growth, innovation, and creativity. Developing value-aligned partnerships with common goals and complementary strengths is a critical aspect of successful innovation.
Companies that excel at innovation have a composed and self assured approach to stand out from competitors, attract more customers and investors, and grow faster than companies that don’t. The next big idea can come from anywhere at any time. By improving your focus on innovation, you improve the odds that it will come from you.
Follow A Cohesive Process
Whilst innovation involves a great deal of open creativity, there is room for a structure to bring new ideas to life more efficiently and effectively. An innovation process merges existing and new findings together to bring about new marketable solutions and to achieve the set goal. Following a proven strategy for market innovation has several advantages:
- It prompts you towards action: A process gives you steps to follow to get out of ideation and into phases of action that push the idea forward.
- Increases efficiency through alignment: An innovation process gets everyone on the same page regarding what steps to take when, what the goals are, and who is accountable for each action.
- Reduces the risk of failure: A good innovation process integrates decision points that allow for decisions to be made earlier in the process. More frequent decision points help companies avoid unnecessary development costs that would not have led to results.
- Creates documentation for decisions and learning: The innovation process sets up a transparent and traceable path with criteria and measurable goals to achieve a shared vision of success.
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