Exploring Effective Factors for the Generation of Innovative Ideas and Technologies in Functional Food R&D

Functional foods are promising products with physiological effects that may provide health benefits. Innovative concepts and technologies that derive from individual creativity and serendipitous findings are indispensable in order to make good sales and achieve a share in the growing functional food market. However, there have been few reports discussing manufacturers in the food industry adapting any kind of a management system for promoting creativity and serendipity. In this paper, we demonstrate the analogy of the R&D processes between functional foods and drugs to point out the important role of serendipity in functional food R&D. To achieve our goal of constructing an effective management system for idea generation in the functional food sector, we conducted survey analysis of 114 R&D researchers and engineers at 74 companies in the sector using a questionnaire on idea generation. Through factorial analysis, we extracted the novel factors underlying idea generation in functional food R&D. We would like to show how these factors may promote creativity and serendipity.