Michele Sandoval sees innovation as resilient in the face of ambiguity, adapting to a changing environment and staying focused on growth goals. INVESTING IN INNOVATION
Michele Sandoval, Director of Innovation, E&J Gallo Winery
Innovation seems to have solid footing in 2024. A lot of companies are investing in innovation, whether that’s separate innovation practices or innovation roles within their company. We have innovation as one of our core values. The only way you can truly grow a company is through staying innovative, and thinking about new lines of business, new opportunities, and new growth. You can grow within your existing businesses and your existing products, but typically that growth is a little slower. When you think about the trajectory and how fast things are changing in the world and the environment around us, you’re going to be left behind without innovation.
There’s a big difference between incremental innovation and breakthrough innovation, though we’re going to continue to see both this year. There’s a role for both types.
Incremental innovation is more line extensions from existing platforms. If you think about our culture, how many Marvel movies have we had and how many Marvel movies do they continue to make? That’s technically line extension innovation, even though they’re new stories, new movies, and even new characters. They’re still all building off the same foundation. The difficulty with breakthrough innovation is that it’s so few and far between. You need that balance within your portfolio to ensure that you achieve the growth goals that you have in mind. The standard thinking is that you want to have at least 70% as a line extension- type core innovation, maybe 20% more adjacent, and only 10% breakthrough innovation. Maybe that’s not the right mix all the time, but balancing is important. FULL STEAM AHEAD We are full steam ahead in 2024. We set the stage for new introductions typically in the first quarter. That means that the whole back half of the year prior to that first quarter is all the preparation, planning, and production needed to essentially have new products
FEI 2024 & Key Innovation Perspectives
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