Key Success Factors of Innovation in Multinational Agrifood Prospector Companies

Abstract

The Wageningen Innovation Assessment Tool (WIAT) assesses a company’s drivers and barriers to innovation and benchmarks the critical success and failure factors of its innovation projects with data of agrifood prospector companies around the world. The present paper discusses its application in 12 multinational agrifood prospector companies in the Netherlands and France. It is concluded that WIAT by uncovering the tacit knowledge of the innovation project team creates opportunities for substantial improvement of the innovation process, and that agrifood companies should specifically pay attention to market and product related up-front activities.