How We Work

Our team of Innovation Managers can help you identify the challenges in your business that could be addressed through data & digital technology. Working with Food Agility you can leverage your R&D investment through co-investment and R&D tax incentives, and connect to our network of leading agribusinesses, technologists and researchers.  Talk to your Innovation Manager about your idea or submit it directly via the Ideas Café.

What you should know at this stage:

• What the problem is
• How digital technology and/or data could potentially solve it
• What question/s you need researchers to answer
• Who are the end-users you could test your early ideas with

We spend time upfront to properly design and plan projects so they deliver the impact industry needs and a return-on-investment for partners. Our Research Agility Lean Canvas is the central tool we use. We support partners through Design Central workshops, harnessing lean startup and design thinking methods to scope a project for maximum impact. Design Central workshops are structured to provide most of the information you'll need for the Project Plan. The Food Agility team considers Project Plans and the team's pitch to make decisions about which projects we invest in. Unlike standard research grant proposals, if you’ve gotten to the point of a pitching a project plan, it’s likely we’ll invest.

• What you should know at this stage:
• The value to the end-user
• What your minimum viable product will be
• Your OKRs
• The committed group of partners
• What each partner is willing to give and what they want to get
• How data will be managed
• Who has rights to new and existing IP

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We prioritise people and relationships over processes, and outcomes over activities. By setting the team up with the right tools, rhythms and objectives, we support projects to deliver scalable outputs that industry needs. It's important to test early and often with end-users. If feedback and other data suggest the project won't deliver what end-users need, we support teams to pivot. We hold quarterly showcases where each project team presents what they've delivered, what they've learned and how that will influence what they do next. The Research Agility Lean Canvas and OKRs developed in the planning stage become live documents that are consistently reviewed and updated as teams learn.

What you should know at this stage:

• How your team will work together
• Your MVP (minimum viable product) and how you’ll test it
• Your regular progress towards OKRs
• How you are testing the riskiest assumptions
• How to report & manage budgets
• The scalable, commercial/adoption pathway
• How you will measure impact beyond the project
• How to access support from the Food Agility team