Strategic Innovation Ltd

Intangible emotions drive #consumer #behaviour. As much as 70% (Gallup, 2022) to 95% (Zaltman, 2003), depending on whom you ask. From the decision to purchase (and repurchase) a product, to the how, when and why it's used, brands need to navigate a minefield of emotions along the user journey. Knowing how consumers feel about your product on flavour, usability, value for money, sustainability, etc., as well as wider macrotrends like #ultraprocessed foods and #cleanbeauty can help you stay ahead of the competition. Our #sociallistening capability #Hazel can track any aspect of your product or service across 19 different emotions, over time. Just imagine what we can do for you #consumerinsight #fmcg #sustainability #ai #emotionalanalytics

In honour of National Carrot Day, the Strategic Innovation Ltd team is busy exchanging carrot-based ideas for tonight’s dinner! Whether it’s a classic carrot and coriander soup or a creative carrot-top pesto over pasta, there are certainly plenty of options! Carrots, being rich in bioactive compounds and dietary fibre aren’t just a great addition to the dinner plate; they can also support the development of a more sustainable and circular economy. A research group at Porto Polytechnic in Portugal, for example, recently highlighted how agrifood processing waste can be transformed into valuable products like nutraceuticals, cosmetics, biofuels, and more! (Check out their work here: https://lnkd.in/eMQyXUFk) Innovative companies, such as Novozymes, are also making strides by developing enzymes to optimise extraction of useful compounds from fruits and vegetables, enabling the upcycling of food waste into products like juices, natural colourants and antioxidants. (Read more here: https://lnkd.in/eWhxV3ed) At Strategic Innovation Ltd, we don’t like to see any foodstuff going to waste and love getting our innovation toolkit out to find creative ways to upcycle it. If you’ve got carrot waste or other food byproducts you’d like to repurpose or are looking for alternative feedstocks and ingredients for your product portfolio, then feel free to reach out – we’d love to collaborate! And to all the incredible carrot farmers, thank you for working hard to provide us with this wonderful and versatile vegetable! And of course, thanks to the lovely people at British Carrot Growers Association for establishing National Carrot Day to celebrate all things carrot! If, like the SI team, you’re in need of dinner inspiration, check out the British Carrot Growers Association website for some tasty recipes: https://lnkd.in/ecXMswrp #theloveofcarrots #britishcarrots #upcycledfood #wastevalorisation #circulareconomy #sustainability

Historic day - who would have thought! I thought I'd drop by to the local bridge over the Great Western Rail Line. It goes from Paddington to the West Country and Wales, and a reason why at lot of people live in Chippenham. One interesting fact, is that from this bridge, you see the end of the electrified section from Paddington. West of here remains diesel. So, given that yesterday was the very last day that coal has powered our electrical grid, thinking about it, this was the very first day ever, that a train has gone through this section of this train route famously built by Brunell - with no contribution from coal - at all. From those long gone days of steam to September 2024, coal has contributed to all forms of propulsion along these tracks to some degree. Today it was no degree. The end of an era. And one we should be proud of, apparently being the first industrialised nation to eliminate coal power. And perhaps we should also be grateful for the many benefits coal has provided over the years. We tend to just look at the bad things. But a very important #TRIZ perspective is that Ideality is the expression of the sum of the positive things, divided by the sum of the bad (costs and harms). Coal has had its day. We have fully jumped an S curve, and are moving into a more ideal future. The new systems of power generation have their own Ideality characteristic and some are a the very beginning of the S curve. Lets hope for a bright future......

Are #apple losing the plot? Are the latest iPhones really innovative or just so-so incremental evolution? The GenX DNA in me makes me a natural sceptic. I freely admit to my life being increasingly adorned with Apple, but maybe that is just overhang from when going Apple was creative rebellion. Apple fanboi? Well, maybe once a little, but now, not so much. Innovation is supposed to be unpredictable and spontaneous. Apple events are "this is the best iGadget we have EVER made!!!! yeeeha". Yesterday's iPhone 16 event was predictable. The new, groundbreaking designs look pretty well identical to the year before last. Jobs, and Ive envisioned a thin, single sheet of glass as the perfect iPhone form. We now have not one, but two new physical buttons. Confusing. Better screens - OK, better cameras, OK, AI integration -OK - but so what? Maybe Samsung and Google are the new true innovators? But writing Apple off is not usually smart. That is because physical design is just part of an indefinable something. Something that makes us deeply connect with a product and brand. Not just what it looks like, feels like or even what it does, but HOW it does it and connects with our life. Three innovation lessons jumped out: 1. Tradeoffs - there was an emphasis, as usual on compute power vs energy consumed. Impressive improvements if you believe the metrics. Apple seem to have an inherent advantage in their integrated software / hardware development and manufacturing systems. The machine / system that makes the machine. At the deep sub-system level there will be many many clever advancements that break those tradeoffs. THAT is definitely true innovation. 2. Thresholds - in #TRIZ, inventive principle 35 is "parameter change". We like to think this is turning something up to 11 out of 10. (Primal Tap for those in the know). Go extreme on a parameter past the point of crazy - and see what happens. A fraction in a degree C has a transformative effect on water. Getting just a bit more battery life allows a full waking day without the worry of charging outside of sleep. Thresholds are important and breaking tradeoffs gets us through them. 3. User Experience / Functions. A little thing that stood out to me was in voice notes; using it to multi-track record. An apparently tiny innovation, though enabled by under-the-hood innovation in acoustics, signal processing and machine learning. You can multitrack already, with earphones and iMovie for example. But this is different. Have an idea - get it down, then play around with melody, rhythm, phrasing, lyrics. Function without the faff, an insignificant innovation that could dramatically unlock the creativity in those with a song-writing passion. Just in voice notes. Much still to say about AI integration and much beside? What do you think about Apple and what we can learn from their innovation journey?

Is your business ready for the change of #season —and we don’t just mean turning the heating on 🍂🛒 As the weather shifts, so do #consumer #shopping #habits. Autumn and winter often see a rise in #emotional #purchasing, as customers seek comfort, warmth, and connection during the colder months. From cozy home décor to self-care products, these purchases are driven by a desire for emotional well-being and seasonal experiences. At Strategic Innovation Ltd, our big data-driven #consumer #insights go beyond the surface to help you understand not only what your customers buy, but also when and crucially why they feel the need for these #emotional connections. Ready to navigate the seasonal trends? Let us help you make smarter, more strategic marketing decisions. #ConsumerInsights #BigData #SeasonalTrends #EmotionalPurchasing #MarketStrategy

Thank you to Caroline Cotto from NECTAR, an initiative by Food System Innovations to accelerate the protein transition with taste, and The Good Food Institute for yesterday's insightful webinar on leveraging sensory research to enhance plant-based meats. The session not only showcased key findings from NECTAR’s latest sensory study - where real consumers tasted and evaluated a wide range of plant-based products - but also underscored the value of robust data in guiding stakeholder decisions. This aligns perfectly with our work at Strategic Innovation Ltd, where we use #bigdata and #sociallistening to delve into consumer perceptions and motivations. Particularly encouraging was NECTAR's revelation that industry leaders are significantly outperforming average products in the plant-based category, proving that further R&D can drive meaningful improvement. There’s a promising opportunity to merge insights from sensory studies with online consumer feedback to generate even deeper value for product developers. Looking forward to continuing the conversation… #plantbased #alternativeproteins #plantrich #foodsystem #sustainability

With only 2% of the average UK manufacturing workforce being under the age of 30, how do we get #GenZ into #manufacturing? As part of the InterAct network, we at Strategic Innovation Ltd, together with our academic partners at the University of Glasgow, University of Bath and others have been unpicking people's memories, perceptions and experiences in a cross-generational study to get more young people into manufacturing careers. Please join us as we share our findings and discuss how to attract the next generation of talent. Karl Warner, Malek El-Qallali, Imtiaz Khan, Nicola Bailey, Anastasia Kulichyova

Weiyao Meng and You Li from Strategic Innovation Ltd had the pleasure of attending a case study workshop hosted by the Artificial intelligence in the Biosciences Network (AI in the Biosciences (AIBIO-UK)) and UK Food Safety Research Network at the Quadram Institute in Norwich. It was an inspiring full-day event where food industry professionals and AI experts united to explore the latest applications of #AI in the #food industry. Throughout the workshop, we delved into the challenges and opportunities within the entire food system and discussed strategies for implementing AI solutions. Here are some key takeaways: 1. Data is Key: AI is only part of the equation. The real challenge lies not only in obtaining the right data but also in getting the data in the right shape that accurately represents the problems we aim to solve. 2. Human in the Loop: AI alone isn't enough. Experts who understand the science and technology behind the problems are essential for successful implementation. There is a need for a resilient system to handle uncertainty in AI-driven decisions. 3. Collaborative Efforts: To tackle complex issues like sustainability and GHG emissions, everyone in the food system needs to come together.  4. Mapping AI Capabilities and Challenges in Food Systems: This session highlights the need for a comprehensive overview of AI's capabilities, the key challenges in food systems, and a roadmap for applying AI to address these challenges in real-world applications. It is important to identify the issues AI systems are designed to address and the specific types of data AI systems need. Bridging the gap between theoretical research and practical applications is essential for the successful integration of AI into decision-making process within food systems. An important lesson is that food systems are complex and we need to ensure that the cost of applying AI doesn’t exceed that of the problem it seeks to solve.    Cutting through the complexity with data integrity, collaboration and practical solutions – this is what Think Better World is all about. Thank you to the AI in the Biosciences (AIBIO-UK), @FSRN, Quadram Institute and all the brilliant minds (Melissa Antoniou-Kourounioti, Dipali Singh, Matthew Gilmour, Andrew French, Emmanuel Ewah, Nik Watson, Alexander Bowler, Antonia Chalka and many more) who made this event possible. We're excited to apply these insights and continue driving innovation in the food industry! #Strategic Innovation #AIBIO, #FSRN #Quadram Institute #AI #Food Industry #DataScience #Sustainability #Innovation #HumanInTheLoop #Collaboration

A great solution to the wrong problem is no solution. Our mantra, coupled with a passion for #sustainability has taken us on a remarkable journey this past year, resulting in an Innovate UK-funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership (#ktp) with the Nottingham University Business School. The result is Think Better World, an alliance uniting food stakeholders through #bigdata analytics to drive transformational change towards a sustainable #foodsystem. The first step is identifying the right problems, and so we are pleased to introduce our inaugural analysis on food-related discussions within the UK House of Lords, as a barometer of topics that matter to the nation. We will continue our analysis into this new era of UK government, using #sentimentanalysis and other tools to better define and understand the most pressing challenges we face, as a springboard for change. Please join the journey at Think Better World John Harvey, Georgiana Nica-Avram, James Goulding, Dr. Chris James Carter, Sarah Connor, Jody Chatterjee, Weiyao Meng, N/Lab, University of Nottingham, The Ingenuity Lab - Haydn Green Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Strategic Innovation Ltd was thrilled to be invited to the GEIDCO(Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization) Renewable Energy Workshop last week at the Møller Institute, Churchill College, University of Cambridge. A convergence of expertise and innovation, it served as an invaluable platform for discussions on the future of energy. There were plenty of lively discussions on technical innovations in #renewableenergy, #powergrids and #storage systems, such as #hydrogen (grey, blue and green) and carbon #nanomaterials,as well as the challenges we face in for instance, powering cold regions with limited sunlight. SI’s Dr. You Li offered a different perspective with her rousing presentation on navigating the complexity of the energy sector and identifying next-generation solutions, using our proven innovation strategy methodologies. The workshop facilitated meaningful engagement between UK academia, private sector and Chinese energy organisations and underscored the importance of #collaboration in shaping the future of renewable energy. The exchange of expertise and ideas reinforced a collective commitment to sustainable and efficient energy, which will power future collaborations towards impactful solutions. With thanks to: State Grid Corporation of China, National Institute of Clean-and-Low-Carbon Energy, China Green Development Investment Group, Shanghai Electric Group Co., Ltd, Qingdao Gaoke Communication Co., Ltd., Trinasolar, China Energy Engineering Group Co. Ltd., China General Technology (Group) Holding Co., Ltd., University of Bath, Furong Li Bo Yin, jian zhuang, Benxuan Li.