The Four-Step Approach

Trend data and foresight scales are just some of the ways Kraft Foods spots trends and finds new opportunities. Headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Northfield, Illinois, the American grocery manufacturing and processing conglomerate encourages its teams to uncover consumer insights to expand as a leader in the food space.

Three questions with Nancy Luna:

How does your team generate new ideas?

At the front end, we have a four-step approach. We want to get away from running into a room and creating new ideas. We try to have people back up a bit. First, we start with a topic. We look at everything we know about that topic and create a knowledge merge. We then ask questions to understand knowledge gaps about this consumer or area, which could be a wide variety of things. We talk to consumers and do ethnographic research. We also interview experts and look at trends; the final step is ideation.

What is the biggest challenge you face when innovating?

The biggest challenge is designing and creating products at a price point in which consumers will still be interested. Some of the challenge can be making sure we understand what the consumer needs are, and anticipating whats happening next. The timing has to be right, and we have to know how to execute efficiently.

Do you have specific rituals for re-setting your team to be creative?

It really depends on the project we're working on. We have folks managing businesses and doing a bunch of other things. My role is to help challenge what assumptions they have about how the world works. Sometimes, these assumptions limit our thinking of what we can and can't do. We want to have people think beyond that at Kraft. For instance, what are the elephants in the room? We need to expose them to strengthen our team.