Our CEO, Guy White, was recently interviewed by FoodNavigator Europe to discuss the rise of AI in innovation research. His perspective reflects what we see at Catalyx every day: AI is a powerful accelerator, but without human insight it risks becoming just another tool that creates noise instead of clarity.
AI in innovation research can compress timelines, surface consumer patterns, and help teams explore more ideas. But when it comes to building the strategy, defining the recipe, and understanding the emotional decisions that drive purchase, human expertise remains irreplaceable.
The limits of AI in innovation research
Too many businesses move from spotting a trend to launching a product without tackling the strategic middle. AI makes this jump faster, but speed doesn’t replace rigour. Innovation success requires mapping consumer tensions, defining benefits, and validating against what really matters.
At Catalyx, our approach uses AI to help build the sandbox, but it’s human strategy that turns sand into castles.
Start with strategy, not prompts
AI can generate outputs from endless data. But prompts are not strategy. True innovation requires clear territories, compelling benefits, and proof points that convince consumers. AI accelerates exploration, but human-led frameworks ensure the results are credible and scalable.
Use AI to explore, not to decide
AI is brilliant at generating possibilities. It can identify emerging flavour trends or cluster consumer language in ways no human team could match. Yet the decision of which innovation territories to pursue must rest with humans. That’s because innovation isn’t about what consumers say, it’s about what they do.
Bridging the ‘say–do gap’
Ask consumers if they’d buy pineapple and mint chocolate, and many will say yes. Watch them at the shelf, and they’ll pick up their usual bar. The same tension applies to sustainability, consumers often declare one thing, but purchase behaviour tells another story.
AI in product development can’t fully capture this ‘say–do gap’. That’s where human insight, empathy, and contextual understanding remain critical.
Why the messy middle matters
Seventy-five percent of new product launches don’t last more than two years. The problem isn’t usually the idea, it’s the missing strategy in the messy middle. By skipping this stage, businesses set themselves up for failure.
AI in R&D should be about accelerating discovery and early exploration. Human insight must then shape the path through the middle to ensure ideas are not just clever, but commercially viable.
The future: hybrid intelligence in innovation
As Guy White put it: “AI just means you get there faster. It hasn’t solved the problem, it’s accelerated it.”
The winning approach is hybrid intelligence, blending AI’s speed and scale with human creativity, empathy, and strategic vision. That’s how innovation research delivers results consumers will buy into, and brands can build on.
Find out how our approach can make your innovation success predictable
We’re ready to unlock your innovation’s success, and won’t settle until our work does just that.
Don’t just take our word for it; check out our Case Studies to discover how our award-winning approach has supercharged the success of innovations across industries.
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