Artificial intelligence and big data will be key to revolutionizing the agri-food sector

Several months after the outbreak of the pandemic, the Innobusiness Meeting Point was held on November 11, the annual event organized by the FOOD + i group within the INCREA initiative, which this time under the slogan Let’s Redesign the Future, allowed everyone to discuss assistants the expected changes in the sector for the coming years .

During this session, more than 50 managers of food companies in the Ebro Valley shared the main lessons learned in the past months of the epidemic and the main challenges that will arise in the coming years due to the increase in production costs and the supply of raw materials. and significant disruption to new technologies expected in the coming years in areas such as artificial intelligence, industrial biotechnology, robotics, and big data.

As Juan Vigo, Director of FOOD+i stated, “We are living at a critical moment where food companies face the challenge of staying competitive by delivering value propositions to the market, but they also have to be careful to anticipate disruptive changes that may alter existing business models. “

Mark Millan, Director of Corporate Acceleration Services at Esade Creapolis, participated in this conference with the presentation Corporate Innovation Through Startups, and highlighted that “companies today must be particularly innovative, as they are conditioned by a series of global trends that are shaping a new one. A competitive environment, where disruption is the new norm. In the short term, we must be very efficient, but in the long term we will have to compete in a market that does not exist until today, where startups will be the spearhead in this process of change. It is necessary not only to identify them, but also to learn how to create cooperation models with them. ”

In this context, the food sector needs to have companies that are increasingly innovative, ready to interact in a fast-moving manner in a changing environment. The presentation of innovative leadership by Xavier Lesauvage, founder of Connociam, was built on this cause, a professional with extensive management experience having worked for more than 15 years as a marketing and sales specialist at Nestlé, Jacobs Douwe Egberts and Panrico- Donuts as he explained “ It is extremely important to identify leadership styles that favor creating professional teams that spur innovation as key elements to ensuring corporate survival and reinvention.”

FOOD + i Cluster is a private innovative business association, consisting of 104 partners, mostly food companies, from the Ebro Valley committed to improving their competitiveness through innovation within the European environment

It currently has 17 approved innovation projects at the national and European levels with a total budget of €34.2 million, of which €6.6 million has been realized throughout 2021, thanks to its significant position in the innovation of major European-level networks such as BBI and EIT Food.

Throughout 2022, Clúster FOOD + i plans to launch a corporate entrepreneurship program with ESADE Creapolis and significantly intensify its portfolio of projects with the opening of a new office, which will allow its partners to benefit from critical assistance packages for innovation offered within Next Generation funds.