{"id":1696,"date":"2015-10-29T22:29:46","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T02:29:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\/"},"modified":"2015-10-29T22:35:42","modified_gmt":"2015-10-30T02:35:42","slug":"general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\/","title":{"rendered":"General Mills Crowdsourcing \u2013 Will they pull it off?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>General Mills is one of the world\u2019s largest manufacturers and marketers of branded consumer foods. \u00a0It operates in the breakfast cereals, baking goods, grain snacks, meal products and organic foods segments. It\u2019s well known brands include \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Betty_Crocker\">Betty Crocker<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Yoplait\">Yoplait<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Colombo_Yogurt\">Colombo<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Totino%27s\">Totino&#8217;s<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pillsbury_Company\">Pillsbury<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Green_Giant\">Green Giant<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Old_El_Paso\">Old El Paso<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/H%C3%A4agen-Dazs\">H\u00e4agen-Dazs<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cheerios\">Cheerios<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trix_(cereal)\">Trix<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cocoa_Puffs\">Cocoa Puffs<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lucky_Charms\">Lucky Charms<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The company is leveraging crowdsourcing through 2 main platforms: the General Mills World-Wide Innovation Network (G-WIN) and the 301INC division.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>General Mills World-Wide Innovation Network (G-WIN)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Through G-WIN, the company publishes and runs challenges to solve identified pain-points and also accepts pro-active innovative submissions from companies and individuals. The key target areas for innovation are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Products &#8211; Participants can suggest new products that fit within a General Mills brand or solve a customer need<\/li>\n<li>Ingredients \u2013 participants can suggest new ingredients to existing products to enhance taste, texture, quality or health benefits.<\/li>\n<li>Packaging \u2013 participants can propose novel packaging technologies or new, consumer-friendly formats<\/li>\n<li>Processing \u2013 primarily targeted at sector specialists and insiders (internal crowd) who are familiar with General Mills\u2019s processes. Processing suggestions are supposed to improve overall quality, efficiency and profitability<\/li>\n<li>Technologies \u2013 Participants can invent new technologies that might support general mills businesses (this is mostly in response to published challenges)<\/li>\n<li>Sustainability \u2013 Suggestions that improve General Mills social impact or reduce its negative effects on society<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>301INC<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>301 INC is the new business development team at General Mills. The group\u2019s mandate is to develop and launch new brands and businesses to enable next generation growth for General Mills. The group targets and partners with third party \u00a0emerging food brands to accelerate \u00a0their growth by nurturing the skills of the founders while providing them with access to capital and the breadth of capabilities such as manufacturing, distribution and marketing that have been perfected at General Mills. The ultimate goal is for these brands to be purchased by General Mills. A primary means of attracting these companies is by sponsoring the annual \u201cMinnesota Cup\u201d competition which is the largest statewide new venture competition in the nation<\/p>\n<p><strong>Crowdsourcing successes at General Mills<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In 2011, Mark King submitted a proposal for a new technology to measure the texture of chewy granola bars. This was in response to a published General Mills challenge (the challenge was a request for \u201ca quantitative method of analyzing the texture of a chewy granola bar to assess differences in bar texture\u201d). General Mills accepted the proposal and worked with Mark to prototype, develop and install the technology. Mark was paid by General Mills for his technology (terms of the compensation were not disclosed)<\/p>\n<p>There are also several successful General Mills\u2019s products that were crowdsourced. These include but are not limited to Nature\u2019s Valley Protein Bar and Refrigerated Pancake Batter<\/p>\n<p><strong>Challenges and risks<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><u>Potential cultural clashes:<\/u> Can an innovation process driven by an internal R&amp;D department co-exist with an innovation process driven by crowdsourcing? Will ideas sourced through crowdsourcing pass the resource allocation process? General Mills can potentially avoid any cultural conflicts by establishing a wholly owned but separate entity to run the crowdsourcing innovation process<\/p>\n<p><u>Competition from venture capital and \u00a0other large food manufacturers<\/u>: Is General Mills\u2019s technological \/ industry knowledge enough \u201ccompetitive edge\u201d against investment firms (P\/E and venture capital?) Will entrepreneurs feel like they are limiting their exit opportunities or potential distribution channels and partnerships by partnering with General Mills early in their organizational lives? What is keeping Kraft and Unilever (and others) from executing on\u00a0 the same strategy?<\/p>\n<p><u>Potentially giving away trade secrets<\/u>: Can the company crowdsource all the areas it has identified in its G-Win strategy? Can processing innovations be crowdsourced without risking giving away competitively sensitive information? Is crowdsourcing better suited to improving processes than management consultants?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>General Mills &#8211; One of the largest branded food manufacturers in the USA is turning to crowdsourcing for everything from new products, packaging to process improvements. Are they trying to do too much? Will emerging food entrepreneurs partner with them instead of venture capital? Is there a risk they might give away sensitive competitive information? What is keeping competitors (Unilever, Kraft and others) from copying them?  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"class_list":["post-1696","hck-submission","type-hck-submission","status-publish","hentry"],"connected_submission_link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/assignment\/leveraging-the-collective-intelligence-and-effort-of-digital-crowds\/","yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>General Mills Crowdsourcing \u2013 Will they pull it off? - Digital Innovation and Transformation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"General Mills Crowdsourcing \u2013 Will they pull it off? - Digital Innovation and Transformation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"General Mills - One of the largest branded food manufacturers in the USA is turning to crowdsourcing for everything from new products, packaging to process improvements. Are they trying to do too much? Will emerging food entrepreneurs partner with them instead of venture capital? Is there a risk they might give away sensitive competitive information? What is keeping competitors (Unilever, Kraft and others) from copying them?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Digital Innovation and Transformation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-10-30T02:35:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/d3.harvard.edu\\\/platform-digit\\\/submission\\\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/d3.harvard.edu\\\/platform-digit\\\/submission\\\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\\\/\",\"name\":\"General Mills Crowdsourcing \u2013 Will they pull it off? - Digital Innovation and Transformation\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/d3.harvard.edu\\\/platform-digit\\\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2015-10-30T02:29:46+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-10-30T02:35:42+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/d3.harvard.edu\\\/platform-digit\\\/submission\\\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/d3.harvard.edu\\\/platform-digit\\\/submission\\\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/d3.harvard.edu\\\/platform-digit\\\/submission\\\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/d3.harvard.edu\\\/platform-digit\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Submissions\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/d3.harvard.edu\\\/platform-digit\\\/submission\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":3,\"name\":\"General Mills Crowdsourcing \u2013 Will they pull it off?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/d3.harvard.edu\\\/platform-digit\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/d3.harvard.edu\\\/platform-digit\\\/\",\"name\":\"Digital Innovation and Transformation\",\"description\":\"MBA Student Perspectives\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"性视界Action\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/d3.harvard.edu\\\/platform-digit\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"General Mills Crowdsourcing \u2013 Will they pull it off? - Digital Innovation and Transformation","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"General Mills Crowdsourcing \u2013 Will they pull it off? - Digital Innovation and Transformation","og_description":"General Mills - One of the largest branded food manufacturers in the USA is turning to crowdsourcing for everything from new products, packaging to process improvements. Are they trying to do too much? Will emerging food entrepreneurs partner with them instead of venture capital? Is there a risk they might give away sensitive competitive information? What is keeping competitors (Unilever, Kraft and others) from copying them?","og_url":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\/","og_site_name":"Digital Innovation and Transformation","article_modified_time":"2015-10-30T02:35:42+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\/","url":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\/","name":"General Mills Crowdsourcing \u2013 Will they pull it off? - Digital Innovation and Transformation","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/#website"},"datePublished":"2015-10-30T02:29:46+00:00","dateModified":"2015-10-30T02:35:42+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/general-mills-crowdsourcing-will-they-pull-it-off\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Submissions","item":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"General Mills Crowdsourcing \u2013 Will they pull it off?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/#website","url":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/","name":"Digital Innovation and Transformation","description":"MBA Student Perspectives","potentialAction":[{"@type":"性视界Action","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hck-submission\/1696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hck-submission"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/hck-submission"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hck-submission\/1696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}