Innovation Challenges

Procter & Gamble

For over 180 years, P&G has built brands that people trust and love, enabled by a culture of innovation and superiority across all elements of the consumer value proposition. Increasingly consumers and other stakeholders expect brands to meet performance and value expectations while also helping solve some of the most complex challenges facing our world. We expect this, too.

In 2018, we released new sustainability goals called Ambition 2030 (https://us.pg.com/environmental-sustainability/). Ambition 2030 aims to enable and inspire positive impact on the environment and society while creating value for the Company and consumers. Solving the biggest challenges we face will require collaboration, which is why we are focused on creating partnerships that will enable people, the planet, and our business to thrive.

With this Design Think Tank brief, our aim is to gather creative ideas around the concept of Zero Waste HairCare Solutions within an urban environment. Zero Waste is a set of principles focused on waste prevention that encourages the redesign of resource life cycles, eliminating the occurrence of waste. The goal is for no trash to be sent to landfills, incinerators or the ocean and the northstar is to be able to reduce existing waste from other industries. Such solutions would offer a zero-waste alternate to haircare products and the formulation could evolve around liquid, cream, gel, solids, powder and others.

Relevant solution domains may include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Business & Service models – reduce, reuse, repair, re-manufacturing, recycling.
2. Material selection – renewably sourced materials, post-consumer recycled plastics, recyclable &/or biodegradable materials, sustained upcycled by-products materials, carbon-positive materials.
3. Product and packaging Design – designed-to-last products, design for easy end-of-life sorting, separation or reuse of products and materials, designed to degrade on its own kind of products, designed for a zero-waste manufacturing process.

What We Are Looking For

• Zero Waste With Well-Designed Beauty Standard: Additionally, as we focus packaging efforts to move to a Zero Waste solution, it is imperative to also recognize that the solution should deliver a delightful consumer experience that maintains the high bars of beauty standards (for example appealing looks & feel, feeling premium, provoke emotional excitement to try etc) within the HairCare category. Key design consideration is to ensure focus areas will deliver on these requirement, as alternative solutions may require different materials, packaging reduction, different decoration/ appearance and different usage experiences.

We would love to hear your ideas and supporting technologies, business and service models that you believe can deliver the actionable solutions to the highlighted challenges listed above. If there is a good fit, we would partner to drive agile in-market pilots to learn together. All ideas and submissions will be reviewed completely. We'd particularly welcome submissions from multiple parties working across the value chain, since we believe these may be more able to deliver 'circular' solutions that address the breadth and complexity of this problem.

For specific enquiries on the problem statement: please contact: tee.m@pg.com

The Coca-Cola Company

At The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC), we are constantly innovating. Beyond the product itself, we continuously seek to develop new and innovative ways to engage and delight our consumers through our core packages – the bottle or the can.

Over the years, TCCC has brought numerous ground-breaking innovations into the market, from the introduction of the six-pack in 1923 to the iconic Share a Coke campaign in 2011 that replaced the instantly recognizable Coca-Cola script with personalized individual names on the front of pack.

In fact, our most iconic packaging, the Coca-Cola Contour bottle, was born out of a challenge to develop a "bottle so distinct that you would recognize if by feel in the dark or lying broken on the ground." Today, the shape is almost universally recognize all around the world.

More recently, an innovation driven out of the team in Singapore saw the lightsabers on Coca-Cola bottles light up on touch. This was made possible by embedding flexible OLED, printed circuitry and thin-film batteries right under the label, giving the bottles an ordinary look until activated.

For more information, please visit: https://www.coca-colacompany.com/company/history

What We Are Looking For

With a brand as established as Coca-Cola, how can one redesign the experience of drinking a Coke to ensure consistent high engagement with its fans and possibly new reach to non-fans? How might we give our consumers a differentiated experience?

The solution should engage our consumers deeply by evoking a strong emotional response towards the innovation. It should also be meaningful, and not just for innovation sake. Ideally, the solutions should be as closely related to our core product offerings as possible, as this is where consumers most engage with our brand.

We encourage out-of-the-box thinking, but the solutions should be in line with the core values of the company.

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Johnson & Johnson

J&J's portfolio of Consumer Health brands provide solutions that help consumers (and doctors) in the prevention, early interception, and treatment of common health issues. These solutions are clinically proven to provide improved health outcomes. However, consumer adoption remains a challenge due in part to their lack of awareness of these common health issues. Simple and easy-to-use consumer diagnostics solutions can help empower them to detect and even visualize the early signs or presence of these health issues and help them move towards an effective prevention and/or treatment strategy.

The following consumer health areas are of particular interest in Asia:

1. Better Sleep Quality for Babies. Sleep has a major impact on health, well-being, and normal neurological functioning and maturation across age groups. Poor sleep quality is also implicated as a factor in variety of systemic heath issues, and poor development among babies and children. In babies in particular, 50% of infants in Asia have problems with sleep quality. Mom's compliance to expert-recommended sleep routines is a challenge given lack of consistent guidance and reminder to aid in habit formation, and baby sleep quality feedback to assist in required ritual changes or further interventions.
    
2. Photodamage prevention. Nearly 80% of skin ageing is attributable to photodamage due to excessive sun exposure. If unaddressed, cumulative photodamage can lead to more serious skin conditions, including skin cancer. Doctors recommend daily use of sun protection, including topical sunscreens, to significantly reduce sun exposure. However, usage incidence is still low in most Asian markets with only 16% of Chinese consumers using sunscreens regularly, for example. Compliance to daily usage and prescribed dosages could be even lower than that, given the lack of real-time feedback to consistently remind consumers to use sun protection and build a sustainable habit change.
    
3. Better Oral Health. It is clinically well-established that rinsing with an anti-microbial mouthwash as part of a daily oral hygiene can significantly improve oral health. But consumers are unaware of the benefits of using a mouthwash because they cannot visualize the problems (e.g. bacteria build-up, gum inflammation, loss of tooth minerals) before it's too late (e.g. cavity, gingivitis, and serious oral health conditions.

What We Are Looking For

The objective of this innovation call is to develop non-invasive, easy to use, and economical consumer diagnostic solutions that can detect, visualize and/or monitor health conditions for part or all of the following use cases:

• Sleep quality monitoring for babies and potentially adults. The solution should minimally measure length of time to fall asleep and number of times awake at night.
• Photodamage prevention. The solution should provide detailed information on predicted sun exposures (UV index, weather conditions, exposure to blue light etc) and appropriate measures to prevent or reduce photodamage. It should also provide real-time feedback by visualizing photodamage if preventative measures are not taken, and the benefit of using sunscreen products.
• Reliable determination of oral health problems, for example measuring bacterial build-up in the mouth without the use of laboratory or dental office equipment, bad breath pre- and post-rinsing with mouthwash.

Key Elements Required In The Solution

Solutions should meet the following design criteria:

• Robust for intended consumer use (e.g. at home, school and outdoors, rugged and baby-friendly for sleep monitor, etc ) and considers human factors key to ease of use and compliance.
• Intuitive software or hardware or a combination of both, easy to use with or without existing consumer devices. Can be non-digital or mechanical. If digital, an Intuitive user interface with the ability to show trends as part of continuous observations or treatment, without extensive consumer input or oversight.
• Accurate and reliable, and supported by sound clinical and medical science.
• Engaging and motivating.
• Affordable for key Asian market consumers (China, India, Philippines) to purchase, OR cost-feasible to be integrated into J&J’s commercial programs.
• The solutions should ideally link problem discovery to clinically/medically-sound recommendations for managing the detected conditions, that consumers can follow through on their own, or in partnership with their HCPs. For example, sleep quality detection could be coupled with a guide on appropriate sleep therapy.
• Non-invasive.
• Fast measurement.
• Replaceable battery (if any).
• Meets all regulatory mandated safety requirements.
• Complies with all applicable regulations and J&J privacy and quality and compliance policies

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The Coca-Cola Company

Coca-Cola started selling exclusively at fountains before being packaged and sold in glass bottles. Eventually, new forms of packaging like cans and PET bottles were introduced.

In 2009, TCCC introduced PlantBottle Packaging - the first ever recyclable PET plastic beverage bottle made 30 percent from plants. TCCC has continued to develop sustainable packaging, including the creation of the world's first prototype PET bottle made entirely from plant materials in 2015.

What We Are Looking For

Coca-Cola started selling exclusively at fountains before being packaged and sold in glass bottles. Eventually, new forms of packaging like cans and PET bottles were introduced.

In 2009, TCCC introduced PlantBottle Packaging - the first ever recyclable PET plastic beverage bottle made 30 percent from plants. TCCC has continued to develop sustainable packaging, including the creation of the world's first prototype PET bottle made entirely from plant materials in 2015.

The interconnected global challenges of packaging waste and climate change have made this a focus that we are taking a leadership position on. Our company and our bottling partners are taking a hard look at the packaging we use and how we can drive change. We are fundamentally rethinking how we get our products to consumers, including what kind of packaging to use and whether a package is needed at all.

For more information, please visit: https://www.coca-colacompany.com/sustainable-business/packaging-sustainability/design

Apply Here

Dedicated to bringing health through food to as many people as possible, Danone is a leading global food & beverage company built on three businesses: Essential Dairy and Plant-Based Products, Waters, Specialized Nutrition.

Specialized Nutrition comprises Early Life Nutrition (ELN) and Advanced Medical Nutrition (AMN). These two businesses represent a portfolio of science-based nutritional solutions designed to positively impact health through food for people who need it most, and at the most critical times of their lives, from preterm infants to old age.

Early Life Nutrition (ELN) is a thriving business at Danone. The driving force behind this success is our portfolio of science-based products that, alongside parent education, including breastfeeding support, provide optimal nutritional solutions for infants and young children. Advanced Medical Nutrition (AMN) focuses on providing innovative solutions in paediatric nutrition (including food allergies and faltering growth) as well as adult nutrition (addressing age-related frailty and malnutrition due to disease).

Among its many businesses, Danone commercializes infant milk formula under different brands and price tiers, to provide nutritional solutions for infant and young children (up to 6y old). Milk powder is a popular way to provide the much-needed nutrition to infants and toddlers and are crucial especially in the early stages of a child’s life. Baby milk powder is what we like to focus on for our packaging problem statements under the sustainability challenge and for our Eastern markets (India, Indonesia, South East Asia).

The challenge faced is coming from the linear model the packaging for baby milk powder is into nowadays. Solving the problem (ie turning from linear to circular model) creates a huge opportunity with positive impact to the planet, to the society and to the economy. This step-change will come from our ability to transform up to 4,000 tons of packaging waste (total across the 3 geographies) into value creation solutions and model, embedded into local system and scalable. 

Studies have shown in Asian countries, less than 50% of the population has accessed to the waste recycling infrastructure due to poor waste collection and sorting processes. One of the critical reasons for the absence of a well-monitored waste management infrastructure in some Asian countries is the lack of funding for upgrading the waste management set-ups. Furthermore, end consumer packaging waste collection behavior in these countries are very much bounded by incentives provided by waste collectors for only selective packaging waste materials.  Actually, end consumers in these countries are very selective in repurposing or reusing the used packaging. Hence it seems critical to consider any type of stakeholders that will enable successful waste management, as well as how to trigger a change of behavior at consumer level.

Moreover, end consumers are increasingly becoming more environmentally conscious and prefer sustainability-marketed product. With added pressure from governmental regulations related to environmental sustainability, many FMCG companies have pledged their commitment at global forums1 to adopt more sustainable practices including relooking at the product packaging of their consumer products from 2020 and below. Hence any opportunities to engage with consumer, governmental and non-governmental bodies in creating new business model for value creation locally while contributing to sustainability will be a win-win situation for these companies.

Apply Here

Dedicated to bring health through food to as many people as possible, Danone is a leading global food & beverage company built on three businesses: Essential Dairy and Plant-Based Products, Waters, Specialized Nutrition.

Specialized Nutrition comprises Early Life Nutrition (ELN) and Advanced Medical Nutrition (AMN). These two businesses represent a portfolio of science-based nutritional solutions designed to positively impact health through food for people who need it most, and at the most critical times of their lives, from preterm infants to old age.

Early Life Nutrition (ELN) is a thriving business at Danone. The driving force behind this success is our portfolio of science-based products that, alongside parent education, including breastfeeding support, provide optimal nutritional solutions for infants and young children. Advanced Medical Nutrition (AMN) focuses on providing innovative solutions in paediatric nutrition (including food allergies and faltering growth) as well as adult nutrition (addressing age-related frailty and malnutrition due to disease).

Among its many businesses, Danone commercializes infant milk formula under different brands and price tiers, to provide nutritional solutions for infant and young children (up to 6y old). Milk powder is a popular way to provide the much-needed nutrition to infants and toddlers, and are crucial especially in the early stages of a child’s life. Baby milk powder is what we like to focus on for our packaging problem statements under the sustainability challenge and for our Eastern markets (India, Indonesia, South East Asia).

The challenge faced is coming from the linear model the packaging for baby milk powder is into nowadays. Solving the problem (ie turning from linear to circular model) creates a huge opportunity with positive impact to the planet, to the society and to the economy. This step-change will come from our ability to transform up to 4,000 tons of packaging waste (total across the 3 geographies) into value creation solutions and model, embedded into local system and scalable. 

Studies have shown in Asian countries, less than 50% of the population has accessed to the waste recycling infrastructure due to poor waste collection and sorting processes. One of the critical reasons for the absence of a well-monitored waste management infrastructure in some Asian countries is the lack of funding for upgrading the waste management set-ups. Furthermore, end consumer packaging waste collection behavior in these countries are very much bounded by incentives provided by waste collectors for only selective packaging waste materials.  Actually end consumers in these countries are very selective in repurposing or reusing the used packaging. Hence it seems critical to consider any type of stakeholders that will enable successful waste management, as well as how to trigger a change of behavior at consumer level.

Moreover end consumers are increasingly becoming more environmentally conscious and prefer sustainability-marketed product. With added pressure from governmental regulations related to environmental sustainability, many FMCG companies have pledged their commitment at global forums1 to adopt more sustainable practices including relooking at the product packaging of their consumer products from 2020 and below. Hence any opportunities to engage with consumer, governmental and non-governmental bodies in creating new business model for value creation locally while contributing to sustainability will be a win-win situation for these companies.

Apply Here