The 3rd edition of the START and CO. 2020 innovation program was responsible for the selection of four winning projects, which will help Nestlé to innovate in the areas of nutrition, health, well-being, and sustainability.
Article by Nova SBE Executive Education | Reading time 4 minutes
From the 51 applications and six finalists, only four teams were selected to co-create projects with Nestlé until the end of 2021. On March 12, the exploration phase was completed and the Fidu, Phamo, Macco, and Good Bag start-ups passed to the prototyping phase.
The START and CO. innovation and entrepreneurship program allows collaborating with Nestlé Portugal, in a real market environment. The projects also rely on mentoring in the design and development of new solutions by a multidisciplinary team from Nestlé, which counts with more than 20 people. This co-creation results in new solutions, conceived together, up to the final pitch, which took place on Friday, March 12.
The initiative, launched by Nestlé Portugal in partnership with Nova SBE, managed to bring together the best in terms of innovation at the national and international level in the areas of Nutrition, Health, Well-Being, and Sustainability.
«This partnership brings together the best of three worlds - the Academy, Companies, and Start-ups - to co-create solutions with an impact in the face of new challenges. Start and Co. 2020 maintains the ambition of teaching, training, and inspiring Nestlé's cross-team intra-entrepreneurs to innovate, as well as to actively participate in the co-creation of solutions with start-ups, collaboratively and experimentally», explained Pedro Brito, Associate Dean for Executive Education & Business Transformation.
The four winning start-ups developed concrete proposals for day-to-day needs. The starting point of the program was the challenge of finding solutions to the participants' real-life difficulties, which had not yet been answered by the market. Some examples of the areas in focus were food allergies, adoption of sustainable habits, the precision of personalized nutrition advice, and even robotic solutions to make consumption more convenient.
«At each edition it becomes more complicated to select the finalists, because a lot of projects with great quality and potential are presented to us, aiming at the needs of consumers but also at the future white market spaces. It is critical to co-create solutions with the entrepreneurial community, and with Nestlé’s specialists who have activated this vision within the company in an extraordinary way, since all of them together brought new technical knowledge and perspectives that support our values of innovation and sustainability», added Andreia Vaz, Head of Strategy & Innovation at Nestlé Portugal.
Applications opened on July 30, 2020, and the program ran in three stages.
The partnership between Nestlé Portugal and Nova SBE has already resulted in pioneering projects such as Allo Smiles, Allmicroalgae, Buggle, InnovaWorks, JIT, Petable, Pet Hub, Progrow, Team8, whose business continues to accelerate.
