Responsible food innovation: a literature

review on an emerging paradigm.

University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
Department of Engineering Sciences and Methods

Authors:
Tarek Soliman
Matteo Vignoli
Monica Hunsburger
Why Food Innovation?

● Business as usual is pushing planetary

boundaries
● Informed consumers are demanding more
transparency
● Urgent need to respond to societal and
environmental challenges.
iftf.or
Which innovations?

In the process of deliberate, design driven innovation, that leverages technological

innovation to deliver new products and services, which innovations do we need to
support and promote?

Ideally innovations should:

Address existing needs rather than create new ones

Be embedded in the context where they are being sold

Take stock of social and environmental impacts, both short term and long term.
Responsible towards Whom?

In the recent past, several technological innovations in food and

agriculture have had negative impacts on the environment and
human health (Giovannucci et al., 2012).

The food sector at all scale cannot afford not acting responsibly
towards the society and the environment when it comes to
introducing innovative products and services.
Towards a framework for Responsible Food Innovation
Part I: Examining how RI is conceptualized in the food sector.

Web of Science, Elsevier and Springer-link databases were searched using the following
keywords: “responsible food innovation” “responsible innovation” + “food innovation”,
“responsible innovation in the food sector, “responsible food technology”+ “innovation”,
“socially responsible” + “food innovation”, “responsibly innovative” + Food.
Preliminary Findings

● Research from the Netherlands one third of the search results that were relevant to
Responsible Food Innovation.
● Research from Italy and Spain made direct reference to responsibility towards the
Territory (constituting both societal and environmental responsibility)
● Among the four pillars of RI, ‘Inclusiveness’ was the most recurring theme including:
Consumer-Expert dialogue, Transdisciplinary collaboration, and co-creation of
knowledge.
● An important feature of Responsible Food Innovation discourse is consumers
sharing the responsibility with other stakeholders by acquiring knowledge and
engaging in dialogue.
Way Forward
● The topic is clearly gaining more interest, as more authors
apply the principles of RI to agricultural and Food related
innovations (e.g. Bronson, 2018; Small, 2017)
● More work is needed to underpin the specific aspects of
Responsible (agri)Food Innovation.
● Qualitative research will be conducted to identify how
innovators’ (mostly startuppers) understanding and
implementation of Responsible innovation.
How innovators understand responsibility (not
included in the abstract)

A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted

with 12 Food Innovators at Seeds and Chips Summit in
Milan.
The interviewees were from different countries, and their
business models were at different stages of
development.
Thank you for listening