Leila Bostanci is a consumer-centric scientist, innovator, and R&D leader who focuses on sustainability, strategy, and team empowerment. She consolidates technical, innovative, and business insights into R&D strategies that solve problems for customers, team members, and the organization. Her career includes some of Europe’s most significant brands, like Mondelēz, Dr. Oetker, and GlaxoSmithKline. She is currently a R&D Team Leader in processed cheeses and cheese sauces at Savencia.
As a specialized R&D Innovation recruiter for consumer goods and life sciences Grapefrute works with some of Europe’s most innovative R&D companies and groundbreaking researchers. We constantly seek to learn, explore, and understand our industry and our world, especially in these tumultuous times. Recently, Grapefrute co-founder Bart Jeurissen sat down with Leila Bostanci for a wide-ranging conversation about the power of innovation in a changing world. In part 1, they discuss the role of R&D within an organization.
The Changing Role of R&D
Bart: It seems as though there are changing perspectives on what role R&D plays within an organization, and those perspectives shape how departments function, and even how innovative a company can be.
Leila: R&D’s role is very much seen as being on the technical side, but it also understands the emotional, more empathetic, consumer side. R&D has to cater to many different sides. You have the scientific side, with people who write scientific articles, and you have people who understand consumer trends, along with those who are rooted firmly in business understanding.
It’s not simply commercialization versus science. R&D needs to be a business partner that is just as holistically thinking as a marketer, as senior leadership, as everyone else in the company. There are lots of things people can learn from other disciplines that are not often explored in classic R&D. This is where one R&D team and company can differentiate itself from its competition.
R&D Innovation vs. Renovation
Bart: R&D teams are often involved in renovation and innovation projects, but are these terms always being applied in a useful way?
Leila: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about those topics, and also touched on them in my MBA a few years ago. I’m really trying to approach it slightly differently, because there’s so much more to it than just innovation and renovation. And, to put it quite bluntly, what’s the difference? Because renovation of brands is usually considered “innovation”, and ideas to save costs are usually called “renovation”. While I understand what the industry is talking about when they use these terms, and I understand those definitions, I don’t entirely agree.
When I’ve worked on R&D product renovation, we called it “productivity” rather than renovation. It was very business-driven, but also really cool. We’re taking something existing, and we need to match all the characteristics (usage, sensory, processability) with a lower cost and more sustainable recipe, and ideally make it better for the consumer.
Whereas “innovation” is quite often simply doing something like a flavor extension. If you’re lucky, you have some consumer insights or consumer research, and then you go and execute. Even though it may seem difficult to have new ideas, actually that kind of innovation isn’t difficult. In fact, extensions are often easier, because nobody’s got a target in their head.
Having worked in the food industry for many years, I have, of course, been involved in all of these areas: scientific research, cost optimisations, breakthrough innovation, line extensions, production transfers and many more…
For me one of the key questions has always been “what are the jobs to be done for the consumer by this product/ recipe/ change or research project? What is the added value?” In other words, which kind of innovative thinking is needed here? In the usual food RD contexts: are we exploring (innovation) or exploiting (renovation) solutions or products in this instance?
Different Approaches to R&D and Data Analysis
Bart: These concepts of the “hard” and “soft” side of R&D can also be applied to data analysis, can’t they?
Leila: These concepts extend to all the data an R&D team generates or has access to; going from modelling, ensuring data quality, to usage and analysis. You have to be careful with the assumptions, and careful with the data you put in, and this requires a very detailed approach. The other data approach is basically the opposite, and it’s an approach you can borrow from fuzzy logic.
When you dig really deep into data, you can become good at predicting certain outcomes. Statistics can tell powerful stories, and this is great for predictable changes in food systems. But is it really reflecting reality, or are you looking at a minute detail of reality, and missing the bigger picture? So fuzzy logic is the opposite of looking very deeply. In this sense, fuzzy logic is a way of squinting your eyes, and choosing an agile approach. You are not looking at all details; you are selecting the top level connections That allows you to see the picture clearly, because you’re no longer categorizing details: you’re looking more vaguely, but more holistically.
You see a lot of people demanding greater digitalization and more analysis, but nobody openly questions the quality of the data. No doubt, detailed analysis is very much needed, and vital for good product development. But it is only one side of the story. And very few people are saying, ‘hey, let’s borrow the approach of fuzzy logic too, because we’re looking at a very complex universe with the consumer world.’ You have to do both.
The technical term is ambidexterity. You have to use both hands, you have to be strategic, and you have to be operational. Which is something R&D stands for.
Another way of looking at a complex system is looking at the relations between details, e.g. consumer groups and a certain trend in their behaviour in a specific context. You won’t understand the interaction with the context by analysing details like the demographics of the consumer group alone. Of course some R&D teams already work a lot with consumer insights (for B2C and B2B) and ensure a good product market fit. Applying fuzzy logic and relational analyses take this to the next level, so these aspects are really cool.
And obviously, the final aspect is AI. How can we use AI as a tool? And that’s again where R&D is important, because R&D people like to think, they like to question, they like to be critical, they like to self-reflect. And because they’re shaping the future of a company, they’re always at the beginning of the change management and the future developments. So AI as a tool to bring up the speed of calculation and the power of data analysis is great. Because between innovation and renovation, it works for both.
R&D is the connection between two worlds. There’s the marketing world that wants something, and the production world that wants something else. R&D sits in the middle, and needs to understand both and needs to apply both. So that’s the usual struggle (or challenge or opportunity or passion) for R&D people: that interface between strategy and operations. Ensuring connectivity between both worlds is what keeps R&D interesting and exciting.
You can see this strategy vs. operations not only in data analysis, but in other R&D concepts as well: innovation vs renovation, science vs application, facts vs emotions, quality vs price, This complexity is the spice of life, and therefore connecting two worlds is the key contribution of R&D to the bigger story.
In parts 2 and 3 of this fascinating interview, Bart and Leila go on to discuss building and leading successful R&D teams, and how R&D can lead the way into a successful, sustainable future. Subscribe and follow for these and more exclusive insights.
