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Collaboration and Innovation in Food Industry

Collaboration and innovation within the food packaging and processing industry

Author

  • Mustafa Ali Ashfaq Bombaywala

Summary, in English

In the dynamic economic environment where knowledge is vastly
distributed companies can no longer rely on their own research and
are pushed to utilize outside sources to sustain growth. At the same
time food industry involves large number of horizontal and vertical
relationships, the very dynamic nature of these relationships play role
in innovation. In order to fully capitalize on supplier-customer
collaboration it becomes vital to understand the dynamic relation between packaging and processing industry and need to operate closely, develop ways to identify good partners and create & maintain fruitful collaboration. Based on this understanding the primary purpose of the research is to study interactions and relations between stakeholders in food industry, to gain an understanding of the driving forces for development in food processing and packaging technologies.This understanding can then be utilized to identify the barriers for collaboration.

Summary, in English

Title Collaboration and Innovation in Food Industry - Study on
collaboration of packaging and process equipment industry with food
manufacturing.
Author Mustafa Ali Ashfaq Bombaywala
Supervisor Malin Göransson, PhD Student at Division of Packaging Logistics,
Department of Design Sciences, Faculty of Engineering, Lund
University.
Issue of study In the dynamic economic environment where knowledge is vastly
distributed companies can no longer rely on their own research and
are pushed to utilize outside sources to sustain growth. At the same
time food industry involves large number of horizontal and vertical
relationships, the very dynamic nature of these relationships play role
in innovation. In order to fully capitalize on supplier-customer
collaboration it becomes vital to understand the dynamic relation
between packaging and processing industry and need to operate
closely, develop ways to identify good partners and create &
maintain fruitful collaboration. However the research on
collaboration with packaging and processing equipment industries as
well as academia is rather limited.
Purpose The primary purpose of the research is to study interactions and
relations between stakeholders in food industry, to gain an
understanding of the driving forces for development in food
processing and packaging technologies. Also gain insight into the
innovation process at major Packaging solution provider (PSP) and
Process equipment manufacturers (PEM), their interaction,
collaboration and information sharing with food manufacturing
companies (FMC). This understanding can then be utilized to identify
the barriers for collaboration.
Method The research follows an inductive approach which starts with a
premise and structure is built around the conceptual framework and
the research objectives. Secondary data collected through literature
survey was utilized to develop a conceptual model. Primary data was
collected through interviews with experts from the industry and
academia who have experience in working with innovation and
collaboration. A non-probability sampling technique was adopted and II
Semi-structured interview technique was followed. The interviews
were transcribed to text and categorized under common themes
which for analysis and comparison. To ascertain the credibility of the
data it was triangulated and compared to literature.
Conclusion The views of industry experts strongly reflect that the role of
suppliers of processing and packaging in food industry is
“contractual” in nature, whereas ingredient suppliers tend to be more
mature partners in the innovation process.
The innovation process at major food machinery and packaging
companies corresponds well to the ‘food-machinery framework’ of
open innovation (Bigliardi et al., 2010). It is apparent that food
industry is taking steps to integrate external knowledge sources in the
innovation process, still suppliers continues to play limited strategic
role in innovation.
Some barriers to collaboration were identified and they can be
grouped into two types: technical and perspective. Technical factors
constitute lack of technical expertise amongst food manufacturer,
requirement for legal framework and difficulty in predicting future
needs. But the more imperative barriers are lack of trust, skepticism
about new technologies and conflict of interest Trust continues to be
the major barrier for collaboration and further research needs to be
focused on this aspect.

Publishing year

2014

Language

English

Document type

Student publication for Master's degree (two years)

Topic

  • Agriculture and Food Sciences
  • Business and Economics

Keywords

  • Innovation Management
  • Collaborative innovation
  • food manufacturing
  • food packaging
  • innovation process
  • academia-industry collaboration

Report number

LUTMDN/TMFL-14/5122

Supervisor

  • Malin Göransson

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISBN: 978-91-7623-050-3