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Open innovation hits its stride

Asad Hamid, VP global packaging at Campbell Soup Co., talks about packaging and open innovation at Campbell.

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Packaging World:
How long has open innovation been a fixed strategy at Campbell?

Asad Hamid:
We’ve looked at open innovation for five years or so, but in the last year or two it’s been more serious and holistic. Some companies rely on external input for one-off projects and that’s about it. But we approach this as building relationships that we are going to nurture over time, because we’re working with partners who bring something to us beyond just one-off solutions. In a world of limited resources, we try to pick which partners we want to work with and invest as much as we can to get the most out of those relationships.

When you partner with peers, is it a delicate thing to manage?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It’s not that delicate when we include peers among the partners with whom we are working on sustainability solutions. For example, as we participate in the sustainability consortium that Walmart has started, it’s not unlikely for us to share information with our peers. It’s a little more delicate if a partnership leads to a joint collaboration or development project for some new technology that we want to pursue together or some innovation in the marketplace we’d like to launch together. In those cases, the legal aspects are more complicated and would require more time to manage.

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