Case Studies

• Accelerate global implementation across North America, Latin America, Europe, and ASEAN to address an urgent market and patient need.
• Maximize formulation harmonization across regions to reduce complexity, improve efficiencies, and minimize development and supply chain costs.
• Challenge the traditional development model, which relied on creating a formulation for a lead market and subsequently adapting it for each additional region.
• Overcome a slow and resource-intensive process that increased development timelines, drove higher costs, and resulted in unnecessary SKU proliferation.
• Balance global standardization with regional requirements, ensuring compliance with local regulatory and market requirements without sacrificing speed-to-market.

• Challenged conventional development practices and implemented a globally integrated approach to accelerate delivery and reduce complexity.
• Rapidly assembled a cross-functional, global team representing all in-scope regions and convened an intensive week-long workshop to align requirements and drive decision-making.
• Assessed and validated regulatory, nutritional, and ingredient requirements across all regions, creating harmonized formulations from the outset rather than adapting them market by market.
• Delivered globally viable prototype formulations in record time, reducing development cycles, minimizing SKU proliferation, and improving speed-to-market.

• Reduced global implementation timelines by two years, accelerating access to critical nutrition products for vulnerable premature infants.
• Achieved significant formulation harmonization, requiring only two formulations to serve 95% of targeted global markets for the flagship premature infant offering.
• Delivered cost savings by consolidating demand into a smaller number of SKUs, reducing manufacturing complexity and lowering COGS.
• Recognized as a breakthrough innovation, receiving formal team recognition and being featured as a “game-changing” initiative in communications with investors.

• Uncertain value & strategic fit — will the technology solve a meaningful consumer or business problem, address an unmet need, and warrant investment over competing opportunities?
• Pressure to move quickly — the business needs actionable insights rapidly, without the cost and delay of lengthy research and development programs.
• Technical and operational feasibility — can the technology be manufactured at scale and integrated into existing operations, processes, and supply chains?
• Regulatory, safety, and quality risks — can the ingredient or technology meet regulatory requirements while maintaining safety, quality, and compliance standards?
• Resource allocation and investment decisions — with finite funding and resources, which opportunities offer the greatest potential for commercial success and long-term value?

• Assembled a focused cross-functional team spanning Early Science Development, Regulatory, Nutrition Science, Product Development, Supply Chain, Commercial/Marketing, and Project Management.
• Executed a structured 3–4 week sprint designed to answer three critical questions: Can we sell it? Can we register it? Can we make it?
• Conducted a rapid end-to-end assessment of market opportunity, consumer need, ingredient technology, scientific evidence, commercial potential, technical feasibility, regulatory requirements, quality considerations, and business value.
• Identified key risks, mitigation strategies, and implementation considerations to support informed decision-making.
• Delivered clear recommendations to senior R&D leadership, enabling rapid prioritization and investment decisions.

A dedicated cross-functional team works intensively and in parallel — combining rapid fact-finding with expert engagement to deliver a decision-ready recommendation in weeks rather than months. Each assessment gives leadership a clear answer:

• Go — move forward with development.
• Go with Conditions — address key gaps before investing further.
• Watch — monitor until the ingredient technology matures.
• No-Go — the opportunity does not currently justify investment.

Successful RTAs include HMOs, probiotic strains, butyrate, EGCG, and soluble mediators from LGG (SOLEX).

• Resource overload — too many projects competing for the same limited people, funding, and operational capacity.
• Lack of prioritization discipline — no consistent, objective framework for evaluating and ranking opportunities across regions, categories, and business units.
• Inefficient resource allocation — low-value, stalled, or lower-priority projects continued to consume resources needed for higher-impact initiatives.
• Limited portfolio visibility — leadership lacked a clear, end-to-end view of portfolio performance, including project health, costs, risks, and progress.
• Strategic misalignment — the active project portfolio had drifted from the company's strategic priorities, reducing focus on the opportunities most likely to drive growth and value.

• Implemented a transparent portfolio prioritization framework using common criteria — strategic alignment, business value, feasibility, and risk — to consistently evaluate and rank all projects.
• Established a structured portfolio governance process integrated with stage-gate reviews, enabling leadership to make informed decisions to accelerate, hold, redirect, or stop projects.
• Aligned resource capacity with portfolio demand, identifying bottlenecks and reallocating talent and funding to the highest-priority initiatives.
• Created executive portfolio dashboards providing real-time visibility into pipeline health, investment levels, milestones, risks, and the balance between short-term and long-term growth opportunities.
• Optimized portfolio investment and focus by pausing or terminating lower-value initiatives and concentrating resources on projects with the greatest strategic and commercial potential.

• Created a focused, strategically aligned innovation portfolio, concentrating resources and investment on the opportunities with the greatest potential for growth and value creation.
• Unlocked critical capacity by pausing or retiring lower-priority initiatives, enabling faster execution of the most important projects.
• Improved the speed and quality of investment decisions through a consistent evaluation framework and disciplined portfolio review process.
• Delivered comprehensive portfolio visibility for senior leadership, providing a single view of costs, progress, risks, resource utilization, and strategic alignment.
• Established a sustainable portfolio governance model, embedding the processes, tools, and decision-making discipline needed to drive long-term portfolio performance.