The cooperative’s chief operating officer, velocity and innovation, Judith Swales, launched a Fonterra Ventures Co-Lab website platform so that individuals, small businesses, or large corporate could submit game-changing concepts.
These would be new products, services, technologies or processes that could come from existing suppliers or from third parties out of the blue, she said.
By its nature, disruptive technology could come from anywhere and there were plenty of examples recently of large and previously successful companies that had failed to adapt to disruption.
Fonterra was now welcoming ideas from around the world and it had the staff numbers and filters in place to evaluate quickly and thoroughly before progressing.
Fonterra ran its own Disrupt programme last year when staff members across the whole 22,000 work force were encouraged to put forward innovations, proceed to a 12-week accelerator, and potentially land a new day job if their concept was implemented.
Citing confidentiality, Swales was not able to say what ideas had progressed.
Komal Mistry, general manager of Fonterra Ventures, said her small team now contained eight people working on two ventures that emerged out of Disrupt.
Swales added that Fonterra had supplied enough resources and opportunities for disruptive ideas to take hold and flourish within the largest corporate in New Zealand.
“We want to incubate these ideas and businesses and give them the best chance of being able to stand and thrive.
“We keep them separate until the successful ones get to MVP status (minimum viable product), and then we see if they are scalable, either within Fonterra, in a joint venture, or in some other way.”
There was no set formula for the type of relationship to come out of Ventures Co-Lab, but one of the key priorities was to build long-term partnerships with companies that would work synergistically and want to be at the forefront of innovation and disruption.
Swales said any new businesses needed to have benefits for both parties, and Fonterra was not setting out to fleece its suppliers of their new and disruptive ideas.
