New Foods, New Consumers: Innovation in Food Product Development

BACKGROUND: Today, new lifestyles, higher incomes and consumer awareness are creating consumer demand for a year-round supply of high-quality, diverse and innovative food products. However, when it comes to innovation, the food sector is less changeable when compared to other sectors, such as high technology. Still, in the past decades much and important developments have been achieved in several areas related to foods and the food industry. METHODS: A systematic review of scientific literature was conducted on Science Direct. The topics investigated were: aspects related to innovation in food development (such as the transfer of innovation, open innovation, collaborative innovation and consumer perception and its role in the developing process); the innovation in the food industry (particularly regarding the processing technologies and packaging, which are two prominent areas of innovation in this sector nowadays); the innovation in the cooking sector (particularly in regards to the molecular gastronomy and science based cooking). RESULTS: A total of 146 articles were included in the review and the aspects focused allowed confirming that innovation has been recognized as a key driver of economic growth. Within the framework of ‘open innovation’, a number of key issues related to the acquisition of external knowledge in food technology must be taken into consideration. Food product development is highly dependent on the consumer perception and acceptance, and hence it is of utmost importance to include the consumer in the development process to minimize failure probabilities. The sectors of the food industry where important developments and innovation are registered include the processing technologies and the packaging systems, where the latest progresses have produced very significant outcomes. CONCLUSION: The present work allowed verifying the latest improvements and trend towards food product development from two perspectives, the product itself and the industrial processing. This sector is undoubtedly a major key for the success and competitiveness nowadays in the food industry.

The Academic-enterprise experiences framework as a guide for design education

The establishment of support platforms for the development of a new culture in design education, in order to achieve both research exploitation and its results, as an approach to the industrial community, challenges higher education institutions to rethink their functioning, divided between investigation on their own initiative or on demand, and its usefulness / practical application. At the same time, through design education, how can they be the engine that aggregates all these frequently antagonistic interests? Polytechnic institutes are predisposed to collaboration and interdisciplinarity. In our course of Technology and Design of Furniture, the availability of a production unit, testing laboratories, and expertise in engineering, design and marketing, encourage the development of a holistic project. In order to develop such knowledge, we adapt three important ways of thinking in designing interactions influenced by the traditional approach, namely, 1) identifying and understanding a design problem, i.e. a market need, 2) defining the design process and knowing what can be used for design education, i.e. opportunities for design education, and 3) sustainability of this framework and design projects' alignment with education in the same field. We explain our approach by arguing from the academicenterprise experiences perspective. This concept is proposed as a way to achieve those three ways of thinking in design education. Then, a set of interaction attributes is defined to explain how engineering and product design education can enhance meaningful relations with manufacturers, stakeholders and society in general. A final discussion is presented with the implications and benefits of this approach. The results suggest that through academic-enterprise partnerships in design, several goals such as students' motivation, product design innovation and potential for knowledge transfer to industries can be achieved.