Validating market needs for alternative proteins

This French industrial group of international scale, a specialist in yeasts and fermentation, operates in more than fifty countries and cultivates a positioning built on sustainable nutrition and scientific innovation. Its strategic innovation department runs a recent programme exploring alternative proteins, notably microbial ones.

Upstream work has already been done: ecosystem mapping, competitive analysis and first product orientations. Leadership now wants to firm up its understanding of market needs on this new terrain, in particular specialised nutrition, in order to validate its product specifications.

An innovation and strategy consultant, experienced in the nutrition industry and well versed in customer insights, works for six months as a business developer: gathering and structuring market needs from major players in the sector, testing hypotheses against real expectations and existing solutions, identifying unmet needs and differentiation levers, producing an enriched specification covering technical dimensions, costs and timeline, then initiating collaborations and tests with market players.