Leading packaging professionals believe that innovative packaging is good for companies as well as society at large and want to provide consumers with quality goods that retain their integrity, shelf life, and other important characteristics. They take it upon themselves to constantly research the marketplace to identify growth opportunities. This is a practice not just for top management, but for packaging R&D groups as well.

Packaging engineers can get bogged down in day-to-day details. Don’t be afraid to empower engineers and provide them with packaging-specific data to help navigate the challenge. The process is more than just using packaging to develop a solution. Consumer behaviours, wants, and needs will inform the best strategy, so engineers need the right data to justify the solutions they offer.

You don’t need X-ray spectacles to see that information shouldn’t be hidden behind departmental barriers or organizational “walls.” It’s important to share consumer insights with all teams and personnel that could contribute to the improvement of packaging platforms and formats.

It’s especially critical to ensure that marketing and technical teams work together to prevent tensions from arising. Engineers and technical R&D professionals may suspect that marketing doesn’t thoroughly understand issues of technical capability, while marketing pros may feel that tech teams are obstructing positive momentum.

The key is for all departments to understand that each has a vital role to play in packaging improvements, and that everyone has the same end-goal. Packaging innovation design doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Innovators don’t rely on the retailer to tell them what consumers want. They continually research new package ideas to meet present and future needs. To consistently meet tomorrow’s needs, innovators maintain a continuous, sustainable pipeline of innovation, planning by two, three, four, or more years. Leading innovators also keep multiple teams working on different timelines. As one team works on plans for the coming year, another works on plans further in the future.

Planning affords organizational agility. To meet the changing needs of the marketplace, companies must remain flexible — from business processes to packaging line designs and layouts.