Finding food solutions through open innovation [Interview]

EIT Food is the world's largest food innovation community. Co-funded by the EU, this initiative invests in startups, projects and businesses to drive innovation in the food system.

At this year’s Fi Europe Pet Food Spotlight, Dr Marie Brueser, EIT Food’s corporate venture manager, will explain in detail how EIT Food works, how companies can get involved, and what the many benefits are to open innovation. She will also share real life examples of open innovation in practice. 

“In essence, our aim is to create a food system that is sustainable, healthy, delicious, and nutritious for everybody,” she explains. “We do this in a number of ways. We have a partner network, with partners from academia, industry and research. We co-fund innovation projects, startup support projects, and also do some policy work.”

EIT Food: ‘We act as a matchmaker’

As senior manager of the corporate venture team, Dr Brueser is focused on bringing large companies together with startups, to drive collaboration and innovation, and to speed up the adoption of new technologies. The team works with more than 50 companies a year to increase knowledge in corporate-startup collaboration, and to set up effective collaborations that span agriculture, food, packaging, and digital solutions.

“We act as a matchmaker,” she says. “This might sound easy, but it can be a little bit tough! While other industries have embraced open innovation and been working with startups for many years, this is only really beginning in the food and agriculture sector. Still, companies are beginning to realise that working with startups is an effective way of reaching sustainability targets and bringing in new innovations.”

Connecting to the innovation ecosystem

In her presentation at Fi Europe, Dr Brueser will discuss Mars Petcare’s involvement in a network call. “This shows how a global leader can open [its] doors to external partners in order to solve a specific challenge,” she says.

Earlier this year, Mars partnered with EIT Food to run an Open Innovation Challenge. The aim was to find ways of transforming fibre side streams into protein and sugar, to make nutritious and delicious petfood.

“The company felt that solutions had to be out there that they could partner with and that they didn’t need to reinvent this technology,” says Dr Brueser. “We used our innovation ecosystem to get them connected. An Open Innovation Challenge call was put out a few months ago, and a number of startups, research institutes and established companies got in touch. The top nine were selected, and Mars Petcare is now planning tangible next steps with a number of them.”

Benefits of embracing open innovation

At Fi Europe, Dr Brueser will explain how corporations can tap into EIT Food and how they too can work with startups to reach their goals. For startups on the other hand, challenges, incubators, and accelerators run by corporates mean that their innovation will reach the right people.

“You are solving a need, which means that the company involved - which will have resources behind it – will want things to happen rapidly,” she adds.

Indeed, the EIT Food community has incredible reach – over 6,000 startups in Europe and Israel in the agri-food space are on the community’s radar. Some innovations are still being developed by teams in university, who are looking for opportunities to commercialise their innovations. The network also includes more than 250 partners, including researchers, NGOs and corporations that are able to amplify EIT Food’s calls.

EIT Food is one of nine innovation communities established by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), an independent EU body set up in 2008 to drive innovation and entrepreneurship across Europe.

Dr Brueser’s presentation during Fi Europe’s Pet Food Spotlight is entitled ‘Future-proofing pet food: How open innovation helps Mars Petcare find relevant partners’. EIT Food will be exhibiting at Fi Europe. Visitors are invited to meet Dr Brueser and EIT Food startups in Hall 3, Stand K60L.