Helping a Global Consumer Brand Reignite Its Innovation Pipeline

Mission Field Leads: Julia Wing-Larson, COO • Jonathan Tofel, Founder & CEO

Client Lead: Director of Global Innovation

Client Overview

The client is a global consumer products company with more than a century of history in a highly competitive household goods category.

Over decades, the company built a reputation for quality and performance while expanding its reach across both professional and consumer markets. Today, it competes on retail shelves against some of the largest companies in the consumer packaged goods industry.

Despite its strong brand reputation and loyal customer base, leadership recognized a common challenge faced by many mature companies: sustaining meaningful innovation over time.

Longevity and market leadership require a steady flow of new ideas, products, and solutions.

The Challenge: When Innovation Starts to Feel Repetitive

When the company engaged Mission Field, the initial request sounded simple: strengthen the long-term innovation pipeline for its retail business.

But leadership suspected a deeper issue.

“We were looking to improve our long-term innovation pipeline in retail,” said the company’s innovation lead. “Like many organizations, we had started to experience tunnel vision. The same types of ideas kept coming up.”

Traditional brainstorming sessions were no longer producing breakthroughs. Teams were meeting, discussing, and generating ideas, but very little was translating into truly differentiated opportunities.

What the company needed was not another brainstorming workshop.

It needed a clearer innovation strategy.

“We were really looking for an outside perspective,” the innovation lead explained. “Two things were critical for us. First, bringing more consumer-driven ideas into the pipeline. Second, learning how we could innovate more effectively as an organization.”

The Reframe: Start With the Market, Not the Meeting

Mission Field challenged the company’s starting point almost immediately.

“The one thing that stood out,” the innovation lead recalled, “was that we came in expecting a partner to facilitate ideation sessions. Mission Field pushed us to rethink that approach.”

Instead of jumping directly into workshops, the team began with foundational work.

Before generating ideas, they needed to define what innovation should look like for the business.

“We needed to do the upfront work,” the client explained. “That meant aligning internally around what innovation really means, understanding our guardrails, identifying consumer pain points, and making sure we were focusing our energy in the right areas.”

The project quickly shifted from a brainstorming exercise into a structured innovation strategy engagement.

Digging Deeper: Trends, Consumers, and Clarity

Mission Field led extensive front-end research to better understand both the category and the consumer.

The work included analysis of consumer reviews, online conversations, search trends, blogs, and broader market signals.

“They brought a much stronger front-end and back-end process,” the client said. “Especially in how they analyzed consumer behavior and leveraged technology. The market research was incredibly strong.”

That research helped surface clearer areas of opportunity.

“We gained clarity around the pillars where we could focus,” the innovation lead said. “That created strong guardrails and opportunity spaces for potential solutions.”

Instead of chasing scattered ideas, teams were now working inside clearly defined innovation territories tied directly to consumer needs and business strategy.

A Different Kind of Collaboration

The engagement spanned multiple regions and involved collaboration across marketing, R&D, and sales teams.

Senior leadership participated alongside innovation teams in a series of working sessions designed to challenge assumptions and explore new directions.

“It was very collaborative,” the innovation lead said. “They really wanted to understand our needs, and they weren’t afraid to challenge our thinking.”

That outside perspective proved valuable.

“I think it helped break up the groupthink,” he said.

Mission Field quickly became embedded in the innovation process, helping the team move beyond interesting ideas toward realistic opportunities.

One of the company’s biggest frustrations before the engagement was the gap between concepts that sounded exciting and those that could actually be executed.

Mission Field helped close that gap.

“This wasn’t just about coming up with ideas that sounded good,” the client said. “It was about understanding feasibility. Could we actually build and deliver this?”

Even discussions involving emerging technologies such as automation and artificial intelligence were evaluated through practical lenses.

Each concept was assessed across three dimensions: consumer desirability, technical feasibility, and operational viability.

The result was a set of innovation pathways grounded in both market demand and business reality.

“Multiple products are actively being developed,” the innovation lead said.

Some concepts are already progressing toward launch, supported by internal planning and early market discussions.

Lasting Impact: Changing How Innovation Happens

Perhaps the most important outcome was not a single idea, but a shift in how the company approaches innovation.

“Internally, we changed parts of our innovation process,” the client explained. “We’re now working with Mission Field to help bring new ideas into our pipeline on an ongoing basis.”

The organization has also introduced recurring innovation summits designed to maintain momentum and encourage structured exploration of new opportunities.

Why Mission Field

For the client, Mission Field stood apart for several reasons.

“They’re entrepreneurial,” he said. “They understand how consumer markets work, and they bring strong CPG experience.”

Most importantly, their approach to innovation felt different.

“Their process is quite unique compared to others we’ve worked with,” he said. “The expertise and guidance were extremely valuable.”

In categories dominated by large global players, the ability to innovate quickly and intelligently is essential.

“It’s critical for us to stay entrepreneurial, move faster, and remain nimble,” he said. “We have a loyal customer base and a premium brand. Innovation has to align with our values and deliver real quality.”

With a revitalized innovation framework and a stronger pipeline of ideas, the company is now better positioned to deliver the next generation of products.