Innovation in Foodservice Equipment

Let’s consider how to arrive at solutions – so we must spend some time defining and understanding the problems. 

 

Let’s cheer for the guy who had a good idea and did something with it.

 

First, what is worthy of being called an innovation? At Ideas Well Done, we like this definition: Innovation is creating new possibilities that create value. As with so many things, value is in the eye of the beholder. A fancy glass-covered control panel is an innovation over knobs; a speedier toaster has value over its slower predecessors, and convection surely was a giant leap forward for ovens. But consider what the microwave oven represented when it was introduced – it was a completely new concept.

 

We see two types of innovation here: the incremental (and valuable) improvements to existing products and the completely revolutionary (and valuable) “possibility”. Most manufacturers dedicate resources to incremental improvements. Customers provide feedback, competitors have interesting features, the product has average benchmarks for efficiency – there are limitless ways to look for and select useful, valuable improvements. Engineering and marketing teams brainstorm to devise new features for the next award-winning introduction.

 

It is so much riskier to imagine something from a blank sheet. A project may fail, and fail and fail – and each failure will lead the inventor to try something different. There will be fruitless paths followed, and frustration, leading to redirection. Finally it will click into place, it will work, it will do something better than has been done before. It will be different - and that can be very hard to sell, adding even more risk. Many don’t make it and those who do deserve extraordinary credit for bringing solutions of value to our industry.

 

The revolutionary innovations are wonderful to study, and we have had some in the foodservice industry: sous vide (still not widely accepted in the U.S.), impingement, slow cook and hold, combi ovens. Most foodservice equipment companies began with a significant product invention that became the core of their business, and the base for expansion with incremental innovations. How many companies went on to produce a second revolutionary product invention? Or a third?

 

It’s the nature of most successful businesses to become risk averse as they grow. Despite the accepted wisdom that collaboration fosters innovation, I think an individual with a flash of insight is the true innovator of revolutionary change. While it may take a creative team to turn vision into reality, the vision itself is generated by an individual. I appreciate the quote by Peter Sheahan, CEO of the Centre for Skills Development, in Joe Carbonara’s 3/1/10 FE&S editorial: “Crowds don’t innovate. Crowds evaluate. There are not industries that innovate. Individuals innovate.” Nicely put.

 

In future issues we will write about products we think are innovative (incremental or revolutionary). We’ll talk about the process of innnovating. We’ll talk to people who do the work. And to people who have problems that need solving. Let me know what you think…