Innovation and imagination: No sector can afford to stand still, but in the food industry are claims of innovation always matched by reality?

摘要

The word innovation is much overused in the food industry. A few years ago, when I was editing a food ingredients magazine, a Spanish company contacted me to talk about their innovations. As we talked, it emerged that the products they were referringto had entered the market three or four years previously, were already well established, and far from unique. When I put it to them that these were not really innovations, they replied: "They are for us!"