PepsiCo Open Innovation Technology Request
The PepsiCo Open Innovation team is the upstream, externally facing, department
within PepsiCo Global R&D. The Open Innovation team is actively scouting for,
identifying, and developing strategic partnerships with external collaborators. The
ultimate goal of the Open Innovation team is to locate key external insights, business
models, and technical unlocks that, when partnered with PepsiCo's robust internal R&D
expertise, will yield disruptive innovation in our core products and/or new and emerging
products/markets. The Open Innovation team is currently exploring novel technology
spaces that can dramatically impact our portfolio of beverages (Pepsi, Mountain Dew,
Pure Leaf Tea, etc.), snacks (Lays, Doritos, Cheetos, etc.), and nutrition (Quaker oats,
Naked & Tropicana juice, Muller yogurt, etc.). The Open Innovation team is interested in
all facets of our supply chain and improving global efficiencies including: crop science,
ingredients, processing, packaging, sensors, analytical equipment, point of sale
equipment, distribution/fleet, e-commerce, etc.
Below is a brief list of some current high priority technology requests from each
business category:
Snacks:
1) New/unique dehydration technologies for food manufacturing (other than baking,
frying, etc.).
2) New food manufacturing processes (e.g. injection molding of food). Cheetos is a
great example of a food manufacturing technique that leverages a core technology from
another industry (plastic extrusion). PepsiCo is looking for other manufacturing
technologies and processes that can be leveraged to run food materials such as starch
to create unique and novel snack foods.
Beverage
1) Next generation of plastic packaging – what is the next polyethylene terephthalate
(PET), cheaper, more sustainable, and with better barrier properties?
2) Enhancement to package barrier (through process, coating, etc.). The desire is for a
cost effective barrier that can be applied to bottles and cans inexpensively after forming.
The barrier can be applied prior to forming as long as it is robust enough to survive the
forming process and still be uniform in thickness with no imperfections. Solutions that
provide for enhanced barrier through process changes are also of interest.
Nutrition:
1) Nontraditional binders for granola bars that would improve nutritional and ingredient
statement advantage (e.g. reduced sugar). The goal is also to reduce the amount of
binder required to agglomerate the food particles. Binders with no sweetness are
desired because they have diverse applications into savory snack clusters and bars.
2) Advances in sterilization/pasteurization technologies including alternative processes
for finished package/bottle. The technology scouting includes sterilization tolerant
probiotics and aseptic filling with particulates (fruit, grains, probiotics, etc.). The ultimate
goal is technologies that can produce sterilization kill rates equivalent to conventional
thermal sterilization, but at room temperatures. Technologies capable of reduced time
and/or temperature sterilization are also of interest. As PepsiCo's food and beverage
portfolio grows, technologies that can handle multi-phase products (liquid and solids)
are becoming more critical.
If you have any questions or comments or wish to be removed from future emails,
please contact me. Thank you for your time.
Austin Kozman, Ph.D., P.E.
R&D Director – Open Innovation & Alliance Management
7701 Legacy Drive | Mailstop: 2T-200 | Plano, TX 75024 USA
Phone: (972) 334-4338 | Cell: (972) 898-5453 | Fax: (972) 334-2329Show less
Notification from the University/Industry Demonstration Project.