Last Thursday, March 27, INDRA held a forum titled “NEW PARADIGMS, NEW SOLUTIONS: How new technologies can help evolve the mass market sector".

More than 100 senior executives from the sector spent three hours looking at the latest technology trends with  key opinion leaders like  Cristina Ruiz – Deputy Vice President of Indra, Fernando Burgaz – Director General of the Food Industry Division of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, Ignacio Larracoechea – Chairman of PROMARCA, Horacio González – Director General of FIAB (Spanish Federation of Food and Beverage Industries), and Pedro Valdes ‒ Partner of Indra Business Consulting and author of this communication. We also held a round table centered on three success stories— DANONE, CASCAJARES and SM (as an example of the digitization of an outlier sector)—and one failure, ALICE.COM, courtesy of the company's senior executives.

As the key event of the day we invited Pau Garcia-Milá (www.paugarciamila.com) to give a talk. Pau is very big on innovation and communication. He co-founded eyeOS when he was just 17 years old, Bananity only five years later, and this year he launched IdeaFoster. In other words, he's an entrepreneur through and through. Since then, he's received major distinctions like the 2011 MIT Innovators Under 35 Award, the Prince of Asturias Award, and the IMPULSA Empresa 2010 Award bestowed by the Fundación Príncipe de Girona. He is also the author of three books: Está todo por hacer (2010), Optimismamente (2012) and Tienes una idea (pero aún no lo sabes (2013). Furthermore, he is a regular contributor to radio and television programs and presented Empenta for three years.

As I listened to Pau, who's now 27 and has started three companies, I was reminded of Mark Twain's famous phrase: “Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72". It's surprising what little innovation/entrepreneurial capacity companies have, especially in the mass market sector. When you look at Fortune's 100 list of the last 50 years, two things strike you: the first is that there are more and more technology and/or traditional companies buying up technology companies (like WallMart), and the second is that most of the new CEOs/founders are no older than 30 or 40. So when you consider the profile of the mass market companies in our country, it's no wonder the state they are in...

Anyway, Pau gave a brilliant presentation on how "traditional" companies can create an innovation process  and overcome the problems they currently face, like declining consumption, private label products, the concentration of low cost distribution (Mercadona), limited internationalization (especially among SMEs), and the virtual absence of automation and modernization (social networks, CRM, eCommerce, customer experience, big data, cloud, digitization, etc.).

He also did a highly illuminating exercise about the innovation process. He asked the illustrious group of senior executives and entrepreneurs from the sector what they would do if they had a cow. This elicited 38 suggestions (sell the milk, sell the meat, hire it out for rides, market its DNA, etc.), ranging from the creative and disruptive and even including one mad response (use the cow as a weapon). The curious thing, as Pau pointed out, is that he's done this exercise hundreds of time and nearly always gets the same 38 suggestions, but in real life only a couple of them have ever been put into practice. Why have the other 36 suggestions never been carried out? Simple: we're not daring enough.

To sum up, he explained his formula for having ideas and putting them to work:

1. Observe the environment
2. Ask the right questions
3. Explain them
4. Draw a conclusion
5. Write down your ideas
6. Prepare the idea
7. Find people who share it

In short, we all have the ability to innovate, and any traditional company is capable of embracing change and being as innovative as any start-up born in a garage. All it has to do is be daring, or buy up companies that have that attitude ingrained in their DNA. That's the only way the companies in the mass market sector in our country are going to survive.