Curtin, along with Karen Kraft, Associate Director, Consumer Insights & Analytics at Johnsonville, held the session, “Revolutionizing Product Innovation through Radical Consumer Empathy,” at FEI25. The audience was invited to learn how Johnsonville developed their innovation strategy through whitespace identification, breakthrough ideation and successful product launches, such as its recent summer sausage campaign.
The presentation at FEI highlighted your work with Johnsonville, and featured what you could call a strategic roadmap to developing a company’s next big innovation, through radical consumer empathy. Can you share more with us about the meaning of radical consumer empathy?
“We’re here at Front End of Innovation 2025, and we see a lot of innovation where you’ve got great ideas that come out of that development process,” says Curtin. “But just because it’s a great idea doesn’t mean it has its place in the market, and so for us, insights-led innovation is critical. Insights-led innovation leads to innovation that is transformational, often breakthrough, but innovation that changes the trajectory of a brand or an organization.”
When you say breakthrough or disruptive innovation, what comes to mind is the days of the lone genius working late into the night in his or her garage. Is that kind of gone from corporate innovation now? Is it all very data and insights driven now?
Curtin observes, “I don’t know that it’s all data driven. I think when you have data-driven innovation, it becomes a little bit too closed in. I do think you need the opportunity to go wild and really push boundaries. But at the same time, when you come up with these ideas, I think being able to tie them back to the business need or the consumer opportunity is critical to success.”
Pushing the Boundaries of Innovation
Speaking of pushing boundaries, this morning FEI held its keynote and roundtables featuring the Rogue Mindset framework. What does the rogue mindset in innovation mean to you?
“For us, I think we’ve been practicing this for over twenty years now,” says Curtin. “Prodigy Works actually started out as a partnership with Mensa, the High IQ Society, and a global network of high IQ geniuses, creative geniuses, and just the most curious people and passionate problem solvers. For years, we’ve really believed that to get outside of the box thinking, you need to go way outside of the box, and you need to create these combinations of people from very different backgrounds and very different perspectives.”
He adds, “This is beyond sort of internal cross functional relationships within innovation initiatives. This takes that notion and brings it even further to be able to bring in that outside thinking. Now, if you can do that in a way that’s aligned with those consumer trends, those business needs, I think that’s when you really identify those perfect opportunities for businesses to succeed.”
