From Pods to Purchase: How Kraft Heinz’s Agile@Scale Strategy is Accelerating Product Innovation
Kraft Heinz’s work to build out its Agile@Scale pod structure is helping the company more quickly scale product innovation, with the Delimex Crispy Quesadillas as its most recent evidence of success.
Kraft Heinz’s Agile@Scale methodology consists of multi-functional pods that are designed to help the CPG operate more nimbly through the use of Agile principles. Each pod contains about a dozen employees who are focused on high-priority opportunities and are in turn helping elevate the company’s internal tech capabilities.
Developed through one pod, the Delimex Crispy Quesadillas launched last week and marks the second innovation within the Kraft Heinz 360Crisp food technology platform.
Kraft Heinz Scaling Innovation
As part of the Agile@Scale strategy, which Alan Kleinerman, VP of global disruptive innovation, describes as the bedrock of their multi-year transformation, Kraft Heinz is identifying a number of white spaces across the organization that are prime for innovation.
The pod worked closely with Kraft Heinz’s cross-functional team across the Delimex brand, including marketing, R&D, commercialization, and others to build a 360-degree launch strategy, Kleinerman tells CGT.
“Similar to how software companies use Agile principles, we are taking a test-and-learn approach across the business — rolling out ‘minimum viable products’ and innovative solutions to gather feedback from our teams and customers,” he says.
The company leveraged both quantitative and qualitative insights in the development of the new quesadillas to better understand consumer needs.
For example, a Kraft Heinz-commissioned quantitative survey found that almost all (95%) of restaurant quesadilla consumers lack the confidence to recreate a restaurant-quality quesadilla experience at home. To serve the need, the company was able to more quickly leverage the 360Crisp food technology it had developed for another product last year.
It was the cross-functional nature of the Agile pods that enabled them to more effectively scale the 360Crisp platform across multiple brands and formats, Kleinerman notes.
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