"Brilliant workshopping on UK Canadian Agri-Food priorities with Innovate UK, with amazing steering by 100%Open"

Malcolm M Campbell
Canadian Workshop Attendee
A crowd project

UK Canada Agriculture

Sector: Agriculture

Our brief: How can we encourage UK and Canadian food supply chain organisations to innovate collaboratively?

What we did: We worked with Innovate UK to bring specialists in the food supply chain from the UK and Canada together in a creatively facilitated online workshop to explore opportunities for innovation in the food sector. We then organised and facilitated a two-day international workshop.

What happened: In the online workshop, we worked with 65 people across eight time zones to develop and rank idea proposals across six themes, gathering rich insight into the opportunities and challenges. By using an online experience we extended the reach and accessibility of the topic to a wider audience, and saved on international travel, additional time and avoided a significantly larger carbon footprint.
Building on information gathered in the online workshop, the London workshop developed food supply chain roadmaps articulating challenges and opportunities for the next two to five years, which were tested by developing business propositions. The immediate opportunity was being primed to apply for grants from a UK-Canada fund of £10 million to support bilateral collaborative partnerships. We also wrote a report ‘Creating a Shared Vision for the Agri-food Sector’ to guide future cooperations.

"Exchanged ideas with a broad spectrum of participants, for example, I was sat next to a tech enterprise and a Director of Unilever which gave for a frank and open exchange."

London Workshop Participant