The Growcery, an European innovation platform for consumer-centric businesses, has been launched at Supernova. By capturing the best of the corporate and startup worlds and connecting consumer brands with technology startups and scale-ups, The Growcery puts innovation to the benefit of consumers and aims to maximise the success of innovative consumer products and business models.
Challenges and Opportunities in the consumer-centric industry
Consumer-centric companies have been at the forefront of digital innovation in commercial areas such as marketing and sales and are increasing the use of digital and other advanced technology solutions in manufacturing processes. The Growcery wants to connect industry leaders and technology companies to co-create and launch new products. As such it not only aims to maintain the competitiveness of the industry leaders but also to accelerate the internationalisation of local startups and scale-up, in collaboration with its partner organisation scale-ups.eu.
Sharing Knowledge and Assets
The Growcery will organise joint activities – business matchmaking, prototyping and testing, and sharing and mentoring – that support this goal. Through organised pitching sessions and hackathons, the Growcery will match corporates and startups based on the parties’ needs. The prototyping and testing will enable and validate innovative technology solutions while the knowledge and expertise will then be shared within the network through a variety of different meetups and conferences. P&G, BPost and AB INBEV are among the first companies who expressed an interest in the concept.
Andre Convents, P&G’s InQbet’;
“With our P&G’s InQbet accelerator we have proof that co-creation and open innovation are not just theoretical concepts but can lead to new successful business processes and products. With our participation in The Growcery we want to take this to the next level, creating a network of like-minded partners that share innovation assets and knowledge on how to create new value-propositions for consumers”
Luc Cloet, CEO Parcels & Logistics Europe & Asia for bpost, is pleased with the new collaboration
“Being Belgium’s leading postal & e-commerce logistics operator, we strongly believe co-creation with innovative partners is the way forward to release products & services that are close to our customers and the Belgian citizens and that perfectly combine the offline & online world.”
GITEC, AB InBev’s Global R&D Centre, located at AB InBev’s Global Headquarters in Leuven, Belgium, will be another partner in the project. With a diverse team of more than 120 scientists and specialists, pulling from more than 20 nationalities, it brings people and partners together to create and deliver winning innovations and technologies, continuously developing new raw and packaging materials, process improvements and new innovative products for consumers.
A collaborative ecosystem that brings together the best of both worlds – corporates, startups and scale-ups
The Growcery is based on the belief that some of the best solutions can be found when established corporations collaborate with innovative startups and scale-ups. A diverse range of experts and niche players will join the ecosystem to deliver concrete improvements through joint learning, technology standards, best practices and shared services.
With the industry expertise, right resources, consumer base and brand franchise, the corporations have the proficiency to bring in success. The startups provide a unique set of assets and a fresh look on the industry. Their consumer centricity, creativity, focus on business and a “let’s challenge the status quo” attitude are key in creating the most beneficial solutions.
Wim De Waele, CEO of B-Hive added;
“Our experience in building the financial collaborative platform B-Hive and the reach we have through our Scale-ups.eu initiative provide us with a strong base to implement the same concept in other industries. We are very glad we were selected by Procter and Gamble to help them build The Growcery and pleased other companies immediately agreed to join us at the launch during the SuperNova conference. With these companies we will refine the concept and grow the network over the next few months. This industry is changing fast and we invite everyone interested in that transformation to join us in the initiative”
