Using a Design Led, Innovation Push approach to evaluate rapid drying technology at low temperature for a new highquality premium red meat snack offering

Summary

This project is characterised by two key criteria: 

• Firstly, JBS Australia had access to an innovative processing technology that enabled products to be dried that delivered unique and desirable features – Snack and Crunchy meat. 
• Secondly, this provided the opportunity to develop an exciting and innovative offering within the snacking sector – playing in a market space that JBS Australia have little experience. 

Whilst this represents an exciting opportunity, it would be tempting to develop an offering internally, creating a product that delivered unique feature-benefits.  But typically, when this happens without engaging the end customer in the process, the end result is more of a novelty than a useful new offering that will find sustained success.

A design led approach was followed, with a New Technology, Push Approach.  The innovation journey was undertaken by a cross-functional team within JBS Australia, to ensure all perspectives were assessed – R&D, operations, marketing and sales.  Critical to the process was the iterative development of the offering, continuously testing it with customers, as part of their real-world snacking behaviour in conjunction with key learnings on the technology platform and product formulations. 

Initially the process started with identifying the capabilities of the innovative processing technology, and as a team, exploring the market implications and hypothesising alternative Value Propositions.  Secondly is determining 'where to play' in the market – identifying which segment of customers represents the best opportunity, addressing the greatest number of pain points and unrealised gains.  Thirdly came identifying 'how to win' against competitors - the basis for developing a winning Value Proposition – the bundle of benefits that delivers against important pain points and unrealised gains for the target customer.  This ensures that the developed solution is most relevant to customers' needs and gives it the greatest chance of success in the market place.  The fourth and final stage was to develop a supporting business model to deliver sustained commercial success.  However, this also recognises the challenges in building desirability amongst target customers and mitigates against significant investment until the offering is established in the market.

The project identified how a red meat-based snack, with unique product features, can be successful in the Australian snacking market.  The process identified a target customer segment, of significant size, whom have an important enough bundle of pain points and unrealised gains in the snacking space that can be addressed through our offering. It determined what are the most important feature-benefits that customers sufficiently value that they are prepared to pay the premium price that our offering will need to command to be successful in the market place.  In addition, technical know-how on different equipment settings, product formulations and flavour profiles, packaging materials for ambient storage and shelf life verifications were completed in developing several product concepts.

This project highlights the best path to follow when a business within the red meat supply chain has access to new technology platforms that can produce an offering with the potential for profoundly new (and disruptive) and appealing product features that can have an impact in the market place.
In this case, it is recommended a Design Led approach is followed, validating the usefulness of these benefits with consumers.  In particular, addressing technical feasibility, product-market fit desirability and commercial cost and revenue viability are critical elements in the innovation process. 

In this project, the team firstly identified the market space that should be targeted, in terms of the target customer segment whom finds these features most appealing, before then optimising the design of the offering to address the most important Pain Points and Unrealised Gains that the customer possesses.  Finally, it is recommended to de-risk the launch, by building up the desired business model in manageable stages, recognising that building demand amongst target customers takes a while and not over-committing, with in particularly significant capital expenditure, until established in the market.