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The Six Degrees Executive team recently came together with Alastair Kenvyn from Radiocarbon - and his team of strategic innovation wizards - to host a high-energy, interactive workshop with over 60 Innovation, R&D, Category & Insights, and Marketing leaders, after identifying a gap in the market to bring together innovation specialists from all walks of life to could come together to tackle the common corporate innovation challenges head-on.
Held at Starward Whisky - David Vitale shared his journey of remodelling in action, rethinking the entire approach to whisky - how it’s aged, how it’s marketed, and who drinks it. An innovation success story in its own - requiring belief, resilience, and a willingness to challenge convention.
The driver for this event stemmed from conversations across the FMCG space with clients focused on optimising structure and process to better enable innovation, with many organisations knowing that what has worked in the past will not be the way forward to drive ongoing and sustainable growth.
Along with a common thread of organisations approaching innovation without a clear strategy, structured execution, or the internal capabilities needed to drive long-term success.
This led to the huddle's key discussions:
- Where should innovation efforts be focused?
- What should businesses prioritise and implement?
- How can companies create better innovation outcomes, more consistently?
The session gave opportunities from people across different backgrounds and industries to come together to share thoughts, insights and challenges to give new perspectives and explored the frameworks needed to drive repeatable and scalable innovation.
Here are the top takeaways from the discussions:
Innovation wins with a strong process to enable, rather than block progress
This was a major theme across all the discussions, with several attendees sharing how their businesses had struggled to embed innovation internally. Adelaide Barbosa, Head of Marketing at Kinrise, reflected on this challenge:
“I'm from FMCG, someone in my group was in an automotive business, which is quite different, but we still have the same issues. We need to understand the role of our core, the innovation platform that we want to go after - so it was good to see that in the end we have the same thinking process, we have the same issues, and there is some templates, some models, some brainstorming strategies that will help us solve whether you're in a FMCG or a truck business”
Radiocarbon explained companies that successfully drive innovation do three things well:
- Build strong strategic innovation platforms, which creates ideas and concepts based on consumer insights and needs
- Treat innovation as an ongoing process, not just a one-off project and use internal processes as an enabler, not a roadblock
- Create and cultivate culture which promotes collaboration and entrepreneurial thinking, where employees feel safe and empowered to contribute ideas and think outside the square
Organisations that fail to build internal innovation capabilities often find themselves playing catch-up. True innovators need to put the consumer at the centre of the conversation, then create an environment which brings new ideas to drive true innovation, rather than just NPD and portfolio optimisation.
If you're looking to outsource or gain additional support for innovation through agencies like Radiocarbon, they should act as an extension of your team. They need a deep understanding of your strategic roadmap, potential roadblocks, and where they can add the most value. At the same time, your organisation must remain open to their fresh ideas and new ways of thinking to truly drive innovation forward.
The right metrics will ensure innovation success is measured the right way
One of the biggest pitfalls of corporate innovation is applying traditional performance metrics too soon. Innovation doesn’t always deliver immediate ROI and tracking it like a standard business function can stifle creativity and long-term progress.
Maya Wettenhall, Associate Director, Marketing VIC shared a key challenge that many businesses face:
“We often see companies invest in an innovation, yet the success of the innovation is measured with a 12-week post analysis. But some of the most transformative ideas take years to prove their worth, not 12 weeks. You need to measure innovation differently to allow real progress.”
Another attendee, Stephen McWilliams, Head of Portfolio + Innovation at Asahi, echoed this sentiment:
“Across industries, innovators are experiencing a lot of the same challenges, and I really think a lot of the time, just spending a bit of time with our consumers, immersing ourselves in their world and understanding, talking to them is often the best way to get to a solution.”
The key takeaways from this discussion included:
- The danger of measuring innovation against short-term KPIs, which can lead to premature shutdowns of promising projects.
- The importance of separating innovation metrics from traditional financial metrics, especially in early-stage experimentation.
- How tracking learning milestones rather than immediate revenue can drive long-term success.
The focus was really to ensure innovation efforts don’t get cut too soon, businesses need to rethink how they measure success. Instead of applying rigid financial metrics too early, leaders should track adoption, learning, and strategic alignment before expecting commercial impact.
Structuring an innovation pipeline for long-term success
Playing the long game! Many organisations struggle to balance short-term quick wins with long-term strategic innovation. Without a structured pipeline, businesses risk either:
- Being too reactive, only focusing on immediate market needs and missing bigger long-term opportunities to drive true growth.
- Over-planning without execution, where innovation strategies never move beyond theoretical discussions.
- Not allocating investment and resource required to drive long term innovation planning.
Ayda Armyoun, Innovation Director at Carman’s, spoke about how critical it is to align innovation efforts across the business:
“The biggest takeaway for me is seeing that the challenges that every business has - of different sizes and different areas within FMCG - we're all facing the same issues in trying to be agile and bringing innovation to market. Having conversations with all stakeholders and ensuring we are all aligned across the front end as well as the back end is key.”
This workshop highlighted the how a strong innovation pipeline helps businesses in three main ways:
- Prioritises ideas based on strategic value, not just urgency.
- Ensures innovation isn’t abandoned prematurely.
- Balances long-term “big bets” with short-term market needs.
Eliza Freeman from Fonterra put perfectly why a structured approach is so important:
“Today was a reminder of innovation’s and it’s role in business and the best way to deliver it. Spending time in that front-end part and separating that from the stage-gate part we often get caught up in, is crucial.”
Businesses that invest in front-end innovation (FEI) frameworks - structured models to test and validate ideas – are much better equipped to turn ideas into real, scalable business outcomes.
The future of corporate innovation
The innovation industry workshop reinforced an essential truth - businesses that excel at innovation don’t treat it as an add-on. They embed it into their culture, conversations, structure and work together to bring opportunities to life.
Scott Logan, Manager, Engineering VIC highlighted why industry collaboration for a topic like innovation is so important:
“We asked our customers what sort of things they do that are like this, and whilst there are some other options, they were a little bit more corporate. They felt that there was an opportunity for something more open and informal that encouraged different industries to share openly. Someone said to me today at the table, ‘a rising tide lifts all boats,’ and that’s why we did it - to give a little bit back to the industry.”
We host events like the TLS Innovation Hub to give back to our community - bringing leaders together to explore topics that matter most. These sessions are exclusive to our clients and network, designed to spark real conversations and equip you with actionable insights to drive meaningful progress.
If you're looking to hire top talent in the FMCG industry, or discuss market trends & how this may impact your hiring strategy - please reach out to the team below.
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