Translations

Bonduelle Hackathon—innovating to promote sustainable farming

1. Organizational Governance

Relations with stakeholders

Sector Food-processing

Year 2017

Country France

Transmitter

Context

Bonduelle, established in 1853, is a family business whose mission is "to be the World reference in well being through vegetable products".

For two years, Bonduelle and its agricultural-sector partners have used the Salon de l'Agriculture, an annual trade show in Paris, as an opportunity to get out and meet consumers. The goal: to promote responsible farming. To take this effort one step further, Bonduelle revolutionised the "stakeholders" meeting in December 2016, borrowing a creative innovation technique from the world of software engineering: the hackathon.

Objectives

Promoting responsible farming to consumers
Working with stakeholders to develop concrete solutions
Bringing together actors from across the sector

APPROACH

The Bonduelle hackathon assembled internal stakeholders (marketing, agricultural services, IT, digital comm, etc.) and external stakeholders (farmers, social entrepreneurs, communications agencies, etc.) to work on the following question: how can we promote responsible farming to consumers?

This two-day educational effort was carried out in four stages:

Inspiration: sharing challenges related to agriculture, farmers, and consumer expectations
Ideation: brainstorming solutions to these challenges (At the end of this phase, participants were grouped into 7 teams, each dedicated to one proposed solution.)
Prototyping: with the help of prototyping tools, teams were able to flesh out their idea, identifying market need, value propositions, stakeholders and societal benefits.
Pitch: each team had the chance to pitch their idea to a jury composed of management and external experts.

In the end, the jury selected one winning project: Agri Party. The team's idea then underwent consumer-testing at the Salon de l'Agriculture. The first Agri Party—an actual agricultural celebration—will take place in September 2017.

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

- Consumers' and stakeholders' perception of the company and its products

- Open Innovation process

Benefits

- Develop staff members' skills and facilitate exchanges across professions and networks

- Promoting eco-farming Best Practices