From open innovation to enginomics: Paradigm shifts

Food industry and engineering—Quo vadis?

Technology offers sustainable nutrition solutions

Challenges facing food engineering

Challenges and opportunities in food engineering: Modeling, virtualization, open innovation and social responsibility

by Philip E. Nelson, 2007 World Food Prize Laureate; Professor Emeritus, Food Science Dept., Purdue Univ. Just as society has evolved over time, our food system has also evolved over centuries into a global system of immense size and complexity. The commitment of food science and technology professionals to advancing the science of food, ensuring a safe and abundant food supply, and contributing to healthier people everywhere is integral to that evolution. Food scientists and technologists are versatile, interdisciplinary, and collaborative practitioners in a profession at the crossroads of scientific and technological developments. As the food system has drastically changed, from one centered around family food production on individual farms and home food preservation to the modern system of today, most people are not connected to their food nor are they familiar with agricultural production and food manufacturing designed for better food safety and quality. The Institute of Food Technologists-a nonprofit scientific society of individual members engaged in food science, food technology, and related professions in industry, academia, and government-has the mission to advance the science of food and the long-range vision to ensure a safe and abundant food supply contributing to healthier people everywhere. IFT convened a task force and called on contributing authors to develop this scientific review to inform the general public about the importance and benefits of food science and technology in IFT's efforts to feed a growing world. The main objective of this review is to serve as a foundational resource for public outreach and education and to address misperceptions and misinformation about processed foods. The intended audience includes those who desire to know more about the application of science and technology to meet society's food needs and those involved in public education and outreach. It is IFT's hope that the reader will gain a better understanding of the goals or purposes for various applications of science and technology in the food system, and an appreciation for the complexity of the modern food supply. Abstract: This Institute of Food Technologists scientific review describes the scientific and technological achievements that made possible the modern production-to-consumption food system capable of feeding nearly 7 billion people, and it also discusses the promising potential of ongoing technological advancements to enhance the food supply even further and to increase the health and wellness of the growing global population. This review begins with a historical perspective that summarizes the parallel developments of agriculture and food technology, from the beginnings of modern society to the present. A section on food manufacturing explains why food is processed and details various food processing methods that ensure food safety and preserve the quality of products. A section about potential solutions to future challenges briefly discusses ways in which scientists, the food industry, and policy makers are striving to improve the food supply for a healthier population and feed the future. Applications of science and technology within the food system have allowed production of foods in adequate quantities to meet the needs of society, as it has evolved. Today, our production-to-consumption food system is complex, and our food is largely safe, tasty, nutritious, abundant, diverse, convenient, and less costly and more readily accessible than ever before. Scientific and technological advancements must be accelerated and applied in developed and developing nations alike, if we are to feed a growing world population.

Open innovation has so far been studied mainly in high-tech, multinational enterprises. This conceptual paper on innovation ecosystem studies scrutinizing open innovation practices that has been applied by firms focusing on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Within the review, we defined the innovation ecosystem, explaining on the innovation issues in SMEs, open innovation as well as close innovation. SMEs pursue open innovation primarily for market-related motives such as meeting customer demands, or keeping up with competitors. Their most important challenges with open innovation are securing the trade secrets. However, SMEs have option either to proceed with open innovation or closed innovation. Open and close innovation has its benefit and weakness; therefore SMEs must identify their main objectives in the business. The future directions of this issue are discussed.

From the Chief Executive and <scp>IFST</scp> News

The technological advancements in agriculture and food technology industry have created many controversial ethics and social responsibility areas. The aim of this paper is to discuss the past, present and potential future trends in ethics and corporate social responsibility in agriculture and food technology industry. It also seeks to identify the ethics and corporate social responsibility gap generated by the rapid technological advancements in this industry. The factors that need to be taken into account by corporate as a part of its ethics and social responsibility when introducing new technology were discussed in this paper. The discussion revealed that new technologies have generated great ethics and social responsibility. These concerns are in regard to consumers and workers health, environment, economic, over use of natural resources and the impact on future generation life. Based on this discussion it was established that in the current situation and with regard to the advancements in agriculture and food technology, the industry has ethical and social responsibility towards the general consumers. This paper reasons that corporations working in agriculture and food technology are required to actively consider their responsibility and adopt ethical and social responsibility policy. Moreover, this paper has predicted the future trends on light of the past and present technological advancements. Based on the discussion, the paper concluded that there is an ethical and social responsibility gap due to the advancements in agriculture and food technology. Thus, it is the responsibility of corporation to address this gap when evaluating new technology. The evaluation should consider several suitable means such as environmental impact analysis as well as social impact analysis. It was also concluded that the current risk assessment of genetically modified food has its limitation due to the availability of limited long term scientific evidence. In order to align the corporate practice with its ethics and social responsibility a list of recommendations were formulated by the authors. These recommendations included but not limited to: 1. The integration of consumer health impact with other relevant factors such as economical and environmental impacts; 2. Adequate labelling of genetically modified ingredient; 3. Adopting an ethic and social responsibility policy; 4. Implementation of post-marketing surveillance and monitoring strategy to assess the long term effects of genetically modified food on human health, and 5. The implementation of a suitable system to control the release of unauthorized genetically modified crops from research laboratories into the food chains and the environment. Key words: Agriculture, ethics, food technologies, genetically modified food.

Applying open innovation strategies in the context of a regional innovation ecosystem: The case of Janssen Pharmaceuticals

A step forward in food science, technology and industry using artificial intelligence

Research has identified an urgent need to renew agriculture's traditional design organization and foster more open, decentralized, contextualized and participatory approaches to design and innovation. While the concepts of co-design and co-innovation used in agriculture resemble features of open innovation, they may benefit from ‘inbound open innovation’ themselves through cross-fertilization with management studies, design science, science and technology studies, and organization studies. This special issue brings together different streams of research providing novel perspectives on co-design and co-innovation in agriculture, including methods, tools and organizations. It compares empirical experiences and theoretical advances to address a variety of issues (e.g., innovation ecosystems, collective design management, participatory design methods, affordances of system analysis tools and network leadership) that shed new light on co-design and co-innovation in support of sustainable agriculture and more broadly transitions towards a diversity of food systems and a circular bioeconomy. This introductory paper presents crosscutting insights and distills from these three directions for future research and practice in agricultural design and innovation: 1) Further opening design and innovation techniques and tools to better account for visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory expressions in evolving designs and what they afford users; 2) Further opening innovation networks in view of creating and stimulating integrative niches that can foster sustainability transitions, which also requires network managers instilling a reflexive stance of network members and broader awareness of power structures attached to organizational, sector and paradigmatic silos in agricultural systems; and 3) Further opening the range of innovation actors to include non-human actants to better account for the agency of the material and ecological.

1 - Trends in the acquisition of external knowledge for innovation in the food industry

Challenges in exploiting open innovation's full potential in the food industry with a focus on small and medium enterprises (SMEs)

PurposeDespite typically being regarded as “low tech”, the food manufacturing and technology sector is increasingly turning to open innovation practices involving collaboration with universities in order to innovate. Given the broad range of activities undertaken by this sector and the fact that it utilises analytical, synthetic and symbolic knowledge for innovation, it makes an interesting case study on the factors that influence the formation of university–industry (U–I) links. The paper aims to discuss this issue.Design/methodology/approachUsing data from 249 collaborative projects that occurred between UK universities and food manufacturing and technology firms, the analysis utilises a logistic regression model based on a “synthetic counterfactual approach” to modelling the probability a collaborative link will be established with one university and not others.FindingsThe results suggest that organisational proximity, conceptualised through the presence of prior ties between actors, has the largest influence on the formation of U–I links. In addition, spatial and technological proximities between actors also have a positive influence on link formation. This result suggests that the specificity of knowledge of the food sector is important in the formation of these U–I links.Research limitations/implicationsThe results suggest that the open innovation practices of food manufacturing and technology firms are like other sectors, even though their innovation practices are considered to be different. However, the limitations of the paper mean that these findings may be specific to firms in the food manufacturing and technology sector in the UK.Originality/valueThe food sector is under-represented in empirical studies on university collaboration; this paper addresses this and provides new insights into the formation of these links.

The paper aims to investigate how open innovations (OI) paradigm, based on the principle of the collaboration between the innovation ecosystem stakeholders can contribute to the adoption and promotion of the circular economy (CE). The engagement in the knowledge, technology and resource sharing between the Quadruple Helix (QH) stakeholders – enterprises, academia, society, government - is crucial for the transition to the CE model. The paper introduces the concept of the open circular innovation ecosystem (OCIE), its key stakeholders as well as discusses the drivers and barriers leading to the successful OCIE.