From open innovation to enginomics: Paradigm shifts

Abstract

BackgroundFood engineering is at a crossroads. Inertia, combined with diminishing research funding, declining new academic positions, combined with disruptive and emerging competitive adjacent domains have a heavy toll on the field and its attractiveness for talented faculty members and students. The proliferation and flourishing of many bio-disciplines highlight the acute need for food engineering profession to revise its vision, strategy and missions and to reinvigorate and expand its horizon. Open innovation is a concept developed for commercial applications for gaining competitive advantages. Open innovation is based on utilizing both external and internal ideas and open channels for accessing and employing knowledge and solutions. Open innovation main philosophy should be adopted to integrate, assimilate and synergize food engineering core fundamental principles and to build on the accelerating developments in emerging knowledge, science and technology. Scope and approachTo fully benefit from the vast future emerging opportunities, food engineering is faced with a plethora of demanding challenges (e.g., new curricula, innovation ecosystem, partnerships, creativity, multidisciplinary, entrepreneurship, sustainability, food and nutrition security, population growth, health and wellness, nutrition, bioavailability). ‘Enginomics’ (engineering + omics) - a new term coined to express some of the major food engineering future challenges that holistically combines food processing and human internal digestion. It calls for studying human internal transport phenomena, utilization of new techniques (e.g., micro-processing, virtualization) for modelling and simulation, emerging topics (e.g., bioavailability, signaling, satiety, personalized nutrigenomics, targeting, pro- and prebiotics, nanotechnology, biotechnology), as well as traditional food and product engineering. Key findings and conclusionsThe food engineering domain should rise to future mounting challenges and opportunities by redefining its vision and strategy recapturing its significant roles, and stopping the loss of its graduates in the competitions with other fields. Several paradigm shifts are recommended including reinventing its curricula in pursuing of excellence with a start-up-university (innoversity) mentality, new mindset for promoting open innovation, implementing virtualization, embracing enginomics and social responsibility. As a part of enginomics and health and wellness, the development of low cost, fast and accurate bioavailability tests is required. Open innovation provides food engineers with the unique prospects for spearheading the four-helix innovation ecosystem. Both basic and applied science and utilizing of the most advanced and up-to-date technologies and scientific breakthroughs are paramount.