Innovation Process Workflow Approach to Promote Innovation in the Food Industry

The economic, social, environmental and safety issues have created a global crisis and no industry is immune to its effects. The consequences of this crisis not only bring uncertainty but also the opportunity to improve. With this regard, the food industry is now facing the significant challenge of improving its innovation process during the development of new products. Products should be economically competitive, easily adaptable to changes to the shifts of the consumer behaviors, and competitive to the new market circumstances. Thus, to overcome this challenge, it is necessary to develop the capability to accelerate the new product development (NPD) process, to understand the innovation process, and to improve the capacity to solve problems inventively. In response, this research presents an approach for a systematic problem-solving process that fits within the innovation process with the aim to promote innovation in food technology. This approach has its roots in the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) and the General Theory of Powerful Thinking (OTSM). The approach guides through the stages of the innovation process; describes the main phases and their sequence; and manages the knowledge, the activities, the tools, and the methodologies to support the problem-solving process. A case study related to the improvement of the spray drying technology depicts the usefulness of this approach and highlights its capabilities.