Challenge
The challenge was to provide the Colgate-Palmolive R&D team with an aligned vision, to shape the future of personal and oral care categories at the intersection of advanced technology and future consumer needs. More importantly, we had to identify an entirely new global ecosystem for innovation and product development by delivering 12 distinct opportunities to the Chief Technology Officer for technology investment to help ignite future-proofed innovation through 2025.
Approach
- Created custom Drivers of Change of the cultural and industry macro-level trends impacting personal and oral care and technology.
- Developed hypotheses, called Future Dynamics, about the larger, structural ways the category will evolve over 5-10+ years.
- Defined white spaces for innovation and co-created technology concepts with cross-functional team in an Ideation Sprint Workshop.
- Mapped technology concepts and identified strategic Technology Innovation Pathways which served as opportunities investment and strategic growth pillars.
Insight
To generate breakthrough innovation ideas, we used the Future Dynamics to create a customised framework, in order to better understand emerging technology opportunities impacting personal and oral care innovation.
The framework identified 12 future-proofed Technology Pathways that represent distinct innovation opportunities for technological investment and advancement over the next 5-10 years and more.
This provides an example of how we can tailor Futures and Innovation thinking for both consumer-leaning and technology-leaning client teams.
Impact
These ideas are now utilised within the R&D organisation to inform their strategic priorities and investment. The Colgate-Palmolive R&D team aligned on three pathways as key technology priorities to invest their multi-million-dollar budget in, to fuel innovation over the next 5 years, funded by the C-suite.
Furthermore, the CTO and CMO are using the work as the foundation for their strategic planning with their leadership teams, forming the basis for ongoing planning sessions with the Global ELT within Oral and Personal Care.