Team Tulip/DC Ingredients
Team Tulip/DC Ingredients
The team was composed of five students who were given five different roles: Food Scientist, Food Technician, Business Developer, Marketing/Sales and Nutritionist. The roles represented the students academic or professional competences, and each student was asked to do a personality test before arriving in Aarhus, in order to compose a strong and complimentary team.
Justin Rosner from Germany was the team’s business developer: “Participating in the challenge and on Team Tulip was like an adventure – with many ups but also a few downs. The latter especially occurred in some heated discussions when we as team members (normally business side vs food science side) could not immediately reach an agreement on a certain topic. In retrospective, these downs were an important part of the process and helped us to achieve our goal – to win the competition.”
Even though the team members had different backgrounds, nationalities and educations, Justin is sure that their shared mentality to win was the key factor for the team: “This willingness to win bonded us really strongly together – we were all on the same page and we all put our egos away for achieving that. Our different backgrounds – culturally and professionally – have been a key factor as well, and through that we were able to tackle the issues on different angles and could come up with a solution, which was fitting for all of us,” Justin explains.
The winner is…
The students worked intensely on the case from Wednesday to Friday morning, where they presented their solution to the jury. The jury rated the students’ solution on the challenge from five criteria: creativity, potential, 360 perspective, strategic fit for the company and implementation. And finally, Friday afternoon the winner was announced – Team Tulip/DC Ingredients was honored on stage as the winners of InnovateFood Challenge 2017.
“It has been very interesting to follow the considerations and reflections the students have had on the way in the process, and no doubt that there has been presented some new ideas during the three days. I’m very impressed with the students approach towards the case and also the many fields they have implicated in the whole project,” says Tina Roed Garza, Senior Manager in International Marketing & Bets in Tulip Food Company.
The team’s solution was a business plan and a prototype on how Tulip’s new snack for school children should look, taste and be marketed. The jury emphasized the many details the students had considered during the three days. They had considered the choice of processing of the product, a name for the new product, packaging and how the product could be marketed in stores and on social medias.
“We got a really exciting and interesting “out of the box” suggestion on how Tulip’s lunch box products with our meat proteins could look and be marketed as “Cool for School””, Director of Technical Sales, Morten Hoffmann Kyed, from Danish Crown Ingredients says.
