The final guest of this semester’s DPELC-MSL Speaker Series was Olaf Gruess, Technology Manager & Global Connector at General Mills. Gruess has over 18 years of experience at the company and currently leads new product development and strategic research initiatives. He is also a big advocate of “Connected Innovation”, a new approach to venture work within large companies in our changing, economic landscape.

Gruess explained how Connected Innovation works in his presentation, “The Rise of Early Start-Ups and Accelerators: How the Food Industry Can Adapt by Using Open Innovation Concepts.” He began by pointing out that we are currently in a different entrepreneurial environment than that of a few decades ago. “Universities are becoming more and more an entrepreneurial breeding ground,” said Gruess. “Our future hires are educated to become entrepreneurs.” Corporations can help attract and retain talent by applying Connected Innovation to their business strategies.

Connected Innovation is most widely understood as buying external expertise from a smaller company or start-up and then working in alliance with them to co-develop a product. Gruess, however, says that there is also potential in selling or licensing an internal IP that can’t be developed because of other projects that are higher in priority or competing internal challenges. In this scenario, corporations could find an external partner who can research and develop the technology that’s already been developed internally. In order to fully explore this option, Gruess says that it was in the best interest of large corporations to create internal incubators and investement funds so they can house their own start-ups and collaborations.

“If you stick to your old ways, you’re done,” said Gruess. “Large corporations saw that and changed their way of doing research and development.”