After a full year of operations, CFIN has a lot to be proud of – from building a national organization in a virtual environment, to creating a community of food innovators, and funding innovative food projects across Canada.
CEO @Joe Lake spoke with @CarolynCooper about some of CFIN’s accomplishments over the past 12 months. Here’s part two of the three-part series. In part one we discussed how CFIN has built an organization in the past year, and in part three we'll look at how CFIN has funded innovation.
Creating a Community
There are now more than 1,900 CFIN members representing all regions of the country and every sector of the food and beverage industry.
That number has steadily grown over the past 12 months as the CFIN team connected with industry through social media, through articles in industry publications, attendance at countless industry events, and by presenting online experiences such as Robotics in Action and New Pathways to the Pantry. CFIN recently partnered with CIFST to present CIFST ALT, the team participated in several in-person events this year that focus on innovation, including SIAL Canada, and is contributing to the Toronto Global Forum on October 17 to 19, and the Advanced Design and Manufacturing Expo (ADM) from November 9 to 10. Lake will be speaking at Protein Industry Canada’s Plant Forward event on November 1, as well as on Carlisle Technology’s Farm to Fork podcast on November 3.
In addition, RIDs are tasked with reaching out to the food industry to make connections, raise awareness of CFIN’s funding opportunities, and engaging in conversations with CFIN members.
“We say boots on the ground a lot, which to me is more of a ranger mentality – you’re out there exploring and learning about the players, the influencers, but also what are the projects and priorities? What are the problems? What are the opportunities? And help bring all that information back into that national soup,” explains Lake. “And then we can help try and bridge and connect. Because we’re trying to create a community. To me, community is a little different than ecosystem, in the sense that you’re part of a community. You don’t have to necessarily be totally engaged all the time, but you’re still part of the community. And that’s the way we’re trying to design CFIN. We’re two-pronged: we fund and we build community. And we want people to come because they feel like they’re part of. We don’t want to just create a list of all these people that are accessible should you Google or phone them. That’s not quite the same to me.”
A key part of creating a cross-country, cross-sector community has been YODL, an online platform designed exclusively for CFIN and designed to facilitate discussion and partnerships among members. With original daily content, collaboration opportunities, funding calls, and lively discussions, YODL is quickly becoming the place to look for potential business partners, network with other industry professionals, and learn about new innovations.
“YODL was always designed as this digital hub, this centralized location that people could come to, but it was never designed or intended to be a database, just a listing of here’s the people who are members, browse this,” says Lake. “We always wanted it to be a place where there was a sense of members having control of their contributions, their engagement and activity.”
The organization hired a third party to facilitate focus groups and needs assessment polling with industry stakeholders and put out a request for proposals from tech companies to design the platform. “And from there we ended up with the YODL platform that we have now. So, it’s one of those things where you kind of know where you’re going, but the path there is certainly windy. And the only thing that’s guaranteed is 12 months from now it’s going to be different. But we always wanted this to be a flexible kind of thing that even the community itself can help design and engage in.”
Lake says the platform is also drawing companies on the periphery of food, which may have the technological solutions food operators are seeking. “We’re looking for innovation, and what’s cool and exciting from my perspective is it also expands beyond your typical players in food,” says Lake. “So, you can get companies who are doing data analytics and medicine, and they can pivot and turn their skill sets to food in a new way, or robotics from the automotive sector, or large manufacturing and apply it to food. There’s a lot of opportunity and ground to be gained in what I would say is collaboration. But we’re seeing it. And actually, it’s much easier and probably more efficient to get collaboration in the non-traditional manners, so a traditional food company with a non-traditional technology, because there’s no competition.”
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