Open Sustainability Innovation in the Food Sector

The food sector is facing a constant increase of competitiveness. In order to address the high competition that involves the food industry, sustainability and innovation practices can be strategically effective, especially an open sustainability innovation approach. The main objective of this study is to assess the open sustainability innovation approach adoption rate, and how it could be strategically meaningful in the business practices of a company in the food sector. We observed that the adoption of an “open sustainability innovation approach in business practices could represent a strategic advantage to reach, at the same time, sustainability and business goals such as, for example: the costs and time to market reduction as well as company’s environmental impact and an increment of the food security. Evidences of this work emerged starting from an overview of the state of art of the food sector from a sustainability and Open Innovation perspective. Afterward we collected some food companies’ case studies that, on our perspective, have adopted and/or are adopting an open sustainability innovation approach in their business practices. By the analysis of these cases, we could gain a better awareness on the effectiveness of this approach on some companies that operate in the food sector. In conclusion an analysis of the evidences emerged in the paper are discussed.