Stack the odds in your favour in product development

By Dr. René Floris, NIZO’s Chief Innovation Officer and Dr. Jolanda Lambert, NIZO’s Segment Lead for Health and Nutrition.

Developing innovative new food or -biotic ingredient with specific health benefits can be a high stakes game. Get it right and you could become the number one player in a major new market. Get it wrong and, at best, you will be beaten to market and have to play catch up. At worst, you have invested hundreds of thousands in a product that never makes it to market. The eternal question is: “How do you tilt the odds in your favour?”

The industry has a tried-and-tested approach to how it innovates to support consumer health. This starts with potentially thousands of candidate molecules, ingredients or microorganisms that could deliver the desired health benefit. Then narrowing down the field in a multi-step approach that looks at different characteristics in each step.

Step 1 involves screening all relevant candidates for desirable and undesirable characteristics to select a short list of possibles. Step 2 is to verify the health benefits of those possibles, first via in vitro models that mimic the human body – followed potentially by in vivo studies. The few best-performing candidates then move into manufacturability studies to understand the impact of processing on the ingredient or microorganism, the potential for upscaling to industrial volumes and any potential food safety issues.

The gamble of food innovation

Each of these steps requires its own, very specific expertise. For example, step 1 increasingly relies on technologies such as artificial intelligence, high-throughput screening, data analysis and bioinformatics. Step 2 requires laboratory capabilities as well as understanding of human biochemistry, food analysis and, perhaps, large-scale human trials. And step 3 needs in-depth know-how in food processing technologies and the ability to produce food products on a variety of scales.

The temptation, then, is to view each of these steps in isolation. Do each step as well as possible and then move the list of successful candidates on to the next step. But, as Jolanda Lambert, Segment Lead for Health and Nutrition at NIZO, points out, the problem is that each step takes a lot of time and money. “If you find out during pilot production that an, until then, promising candidate can not be produced in the desired volumes and with the desired characteristics, you have wasted thousands of person-hours and hundreds of thousands of Euros. Even if you can solve the issues, the time lost could put you behind the competition in a race to market,” she says.

A holistic view improves your chances

The secret to increasing your chances of successful development is to take a more integrated, holistic approach to the whole process. “If, at each step, you have access to knowledge and expertise of the other steps, you greatly reduce your chances of backing a candidate that is going to have serious problems later,” Lambert explains.

But what does that mean in practice? Lambert points to the example of a probiotic product. “After screening, you may have a short list of 10 to 15 promising microbes. In the standard approach, these would all go for health benefit substantiation studies. But in a holistic approach, knowledge of process technologies could help you eliminate any that are known to have manufacturability issues, such as organisms that aren’t acceptable to regulatory bodies or wouldn’t survive food-safety heat treatments,” Lambert adds.

In other words, applying knowledge from across the development chain at the earliest stages helps you avoid expensive and time-consuming roadblocks later.

Finding markets, encouraging investment

This holistic model of product development has other benefits beyond just avoiding issues late in development. For a start, because the chances of getting to market successfully and quickly are higher, it helps build a stronger business case when looking for investment – whether from inside or outside your own company.

It can also reveal hidden potential for innovative new ingredients and products, helping companies target the best possible markets. “Imagine screening alternative protein ingredients to find a desirable amino acid composition for a plant-based beverage. Food science expertise could reveal that a certain protein also has excellent gelling properties, opening applications in meat substitutes as well,” Lambert adds.

This kind of insight helps companies understand the real value of novel ingredients and make strategic decisions accordingly. Are you dealing with a basic ingredient with wide-ranging applications or a premium ingredient for specialised, high-margin products? Knowing this at the earliest stages of development again allows companies to tailor their marketing and approach to possible investors for the best chances of success.

Teamwork makes the dream work

Delivering this kind integrated approach to innovation requires access to a multidisciplinary team that brings together specialists in different fields – from genomics, data analytics and high-throughput screening through health benefit substantiation, food science, food safety regulations, upscaling and food manufacturing. And it requires understanding of how each development step fits together into a complete innovation process. But by leveraging all this understanding in a holistic way, you greatly increase the chances of successful development projects.

The smart bet for market success

Adopting an integrated approach to ingredient development reduces the risk of costly failures and accelerates the path to market. By applying expert knowledge from manufacturability and regulatory considerations early in the process companies can make smarter decisions, avoid roadblocks, and even uncover unexpected product advantages, like improved functionality or new market opportunities. This holistic strategy not only streamlines development but also enhances the chances of success, helping businesses create viable, scalable, and competitive products with a stronger return on investment.

As Lambert concludes: “Success in ingredient development isn’t just about excellence in innovation, it’s about knowing the road ahead before you start.”

This article has also been published on Food Navigator – read more here.