The food industry is an area that is in need for constant innovation and disruption, but innovation is something more than just renovating the brand or adding more flavor options. The MISTA innovation model takes a step further to ensure that its members remain vital and relevant in an ever-changing and highly-competitive market. MISTA is a member-based platform for food optimization and innovation that focuses on a reciprocal system where startups and big companies alike can help each other in an overall effort to create the future of food. Joining Elliot Begoun to talk about innovation culture and the need for further disruption in the food products market is Scott May, the head of MISTA. Scott is a pioneer of innovation in the food and beverage industry, with a 30-year track record. He is currently the VP of Innovation at Givaudan, the largest flavor and fragrance company in the world and one of the founding members of MISTA.

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The MISTA Innovation Model: Cross-Sharing The Future Of Food With Scott May

Before I get started and introduce my friend and guest, Scott May, just a little bit of housekeeping. A reminder that this is all about your questions. We’re going to be spending a lot of time talking about innovation. I want to make sure that you have all of your questions as it relates to that topic answered. You can ask your questions by simply typing them into the Q&A box, which you’ll find the icon at the bottom of your screen on the right-hand side. I’m going to kick it over to Scott and give him a chance to introduce himself but before I do, a little bit to share of my sense of Scott. This is a guy who’s been pioneering innovation in this space for a long time. He is old as shit just so everybody understands that.

MISTA is an amazing home of innovation, a hub for innovation in San Francisco. Scott has been the visionary that’s given birth to it and created the space. When the world opens up again and we start having opportunities to be together and for you to be in San Francisco, I encourage you to make MISTA a place to stop and see. Scott is unique because he has the science and the creator’s mind. Those don’t always go hand-in-hand. He’s almost like a man with two brains. Without any further ado, Scott, why don’t you share a little bit of your background, about MISTA and Givaudan? Then we’ll get rolling.

Thanks, Elliot. I appreciate it. I’m super happy to be here. I love talking about innovation. It is my absolute passion. A bit of background, my degree is in Food Science. I’ve been in the food space for over 35 years. I’ve been with Givaudan, the world’s largest flavor and fragrance company for many years. Elliot, as you pointed out, I am old as shit. I’ve had the opportunity to experience a lot of things over the several decades and see a lot of changes in what’s happening in the food system. That’s essentially what’s prompted the evolution of MISTA. MISTA means “tasty morsel” in Sanskrit. It is all about helping companies both large and small transform the global food system to meet the needs of the future. We know that no single company, no matter how big or how small, is going to be able to do this on their own.

That’s the bottom line for MISTA is how do we bring these amazing companies, innovators, entrepreneurs, and the scale of big companies all together on a single platform to help drive and transform the global food system? We embarked on this journey, took us a while to get it up and running. As you can imagine doing anything in the city like San Francisco can be challenging, but we managed to open our doors on April 2020 because of COVID. We had to shut it down in about the middle of March 2020 but we’re now getting ready to open that again on a limited basis. We are allowing some of our startups back in, so that they can continue the creation process as we move forward. That’s a bit of background.

The facility is amazing. The facility is a coworking space and an opportunity for brands to collaborate. Also it’s important, Scott, to share two things in particular. One is the ecosystem that surrounds the facility and also the equipment that is within the facility because finding both at the same place is rare. I don’t know of anywhere else in the world that offers that. Share a little bit about that if you would.

When we thought about the model that we wanted to create for MISTA, I looked around at some things that have worked, that I’ve seen working and things that haven’t worked, and try to learn from others who have embarked before me. One of the models I thought that has worked well is the IndieBio Model. What I liked about IndieBio is that it wasn’t just an accelerator where people came together and sat in a class, but they had a lab that the biotech companies could create stuff. For me, that was an important aspect of building MISTA is have the ability to have equipment that’s not beyond a culinary kitchen. We have, for example, a pasteurizer, HTST/UHT OMVE small-scale pasteurizer with homogenizer so you can do plant-based beverages, dairy products and those things. We have some bioreactors for working on biotechnology. We have unique capabilities there on site. With our founding members that include Givaudan, Ingredion, Danone and Mars, we have access to all of their capabilities as well. We can reach beyond the facility at MISTA. Elliot, you talked about the ecosystem. For me, with the idea that we need a lot of people coming together to drive this change, it was important to build an ecosystem.

The beauty is that with San Francisco, there was already a strong ecosystem that exists with the work that you’ve done, Elliot, with others in the Bay Area ecosystem that we were able to luckily tap into quickly and build upon that and bring new things into that, to build the ecosystem. It’s been an amazing journey. We have almost 30 startups as part of MISTA. We have the founding members I mentioned, and then we have over 50 partners that we bring into the ecosystem. We try to find the best of the best in capabilities that exist in all facets of the food system and we bring that to bear, to help them support our members.

It’s an amazing place for collaboration. I’ve spent quite a bit of time there and watched the angst of you trying to build that out and wrestling with the joys of trying to do something new in the City of San Francisco, which is anything but this. I want to get right into the meat of innovation. There are a lot of talks, every brand says they have an innovation pipeline, but how should brands be looking, thinking about innovation? Let me frame this for the audience is that likely the majority of those reading are earlier stage founders with small teams. They’re always asked by investors, “What’s your innovation pipeline? How are you going to move the business forward? What’s your long-term vision? How do you see SKUs proliferating, other categories growing or being disruptive?” As they look for that and as they think about that, any words of wisdom at a high level as to how they might approach innovation?

First, maybe I can walk through briefly on the definition of innovation and how we view that. It comes down to three things. The first with innovation is you have to understand the conditions that exist. As we’ve seen with COVID, those conditions can change rapidly. We’ve never seen these conditions shift at this pace. The second thing is, with these changing conditions, there is always going to be changing and evolving opportunities. As an innovator, it is our job to first understand the conditions, identify these opportunities and lastly, then be able to execute against whatever opportunity we discover.

That’s a simple thing but sometimes hard to execute against. As part of that, we’ve developed a simple model that we call the MISTA Innovation Model. It’s a continuously evolving loop where the first part of that is experience. Anybody who is innovating, you need to understand what is happening around you. In order to do that, you have to expose yourself to as many experiences as you can. I use the example of a golfer. There is no good golfer out there that read about golfing. They had to go out and golf. They had to practice. They had the experience with a lot of different courses to become a good golfer.

To be a good innovator, you have to experience a whole bunch of different things, different ingredients, technologies and people. For MISTA, that is the primary goal of what we’re doing. We’re enabling people on our platform to get new experiences. The second part of this model is taking those experiences, and with those experiences, you can begin to identify these conditions that are evolving. The next step is to reflect upon what opportunities are emerging. That’s a hard part, but if you have an ecosystem where you can bounce some of these things off of, you can begin to distill out what are the real opportunities that exist for both early-stage companies and later-stage.

Lastly, the integration piece and as we know, integration is one of the hardest things to do, especially for bigger companies because they’re on a trajectory and it’s hard to move that, but it’s essential. You have to understand what opportunities exist and how you’re going to execute those by integrating what you learn into everything that you do here. That’s the whole point of MISTA and out of that, you can begin to adapt and evolve. That’s our model and that’s how I see it. My advice for anybody in this food space is to plug into different ecosystems. Plug into different ways to understand these new experiences, because what’s amazing is that we’ve seen a number of interactions where early-stage companies are learning from each other. We maybe have an early-stage company that’s bringing a new ingredient to market. If you’re an early-stage CPG company, you can get a hold of those new ingredients and be first to market. That’s the beauty of this is being able to experience these things quickly, figure out how they come together and executing against that and that’s what we try to help them do.

A culture of innovation across innovation is key and much of what you do is foster open innovation where everyone is working together. Specific to these times and the challenges that are facing everybody, one of the biggest is access to capital. The reality for many small brands is that they’re having to go further with less than ever before, which puts a new premium on capital efficiency. For those reading, they’re probably sick of me beating that drum, but how does a dogged approach and commitment to capital efficiency fit in with also a similar commitment to innovation?

When we talk about innovation and we talk about identifying the conditions and the opportunities, there is a need to leverage the learnings of others that have come before us. By not having each company to reinvent the wheel, that’s where you can have some of these savings and capital efficiency. By tapping into different partners and capabilities, maybe it’s universities and things where you’re not laying out cash for things that maybe you have in the past, that is part of innovation. It’s how do you do things in a different way without burning a lot of cash. That’s what we’re trying to do is support our ecosystem in a way that brings new ideas or thoughts to everybody that can save them time and money that can accelerate what they’re trying to do much faster in that way you’re being much more capital efficient. That’s how we approach that particular topic.

Let’s talk some of the fun stuff here, and that is when brands and founders approach innovation. What are some of the things that you’ve seen in terms of mindset, activity, thought process that has worked well and served them well?

First of all, as we all know, being an entrepreneur is challenging. There are lots of obstacles thrown your way. The first thing that comes to mind is tenacity. We’ve seen the most successful entrepreneurs come through our doors with that mindset that not that they know it all, but that there is no challenge that is too difficult for them to overcome. That for me is the biggest mindset requirement for any entrepreneur is having the ability to navigate these challenges that get thrown in front of us. COVID is a perfect one because I don’t know of any bigger challenge that has been thrown in front of people. It’s that willingness to drive through and figure out a way to resolve it. It comes down to innovation. That’s an innovator’s mindset is there is not one way to address this. If you run into a roadblock, the best innovators find ways around whether it’s talking to the right people, exploring new things or new examples.

From my personal experience too, as we were building MISTA and we were doing this behind Givaudan, which is a large company, and I can tell you, there were a number of challenges that we had to overcome. It would’ve been easy to simply give up and go back to a comfortable position, but that’s not the mindset I have. I knew that this was needed and I knew that there was an opportunity there. There’s a famous book out there that’s called You Can Kill An Idea, But You Can’t Kill An Opportunity. If you realize that opportunity exists, keep going for it and eventually, you’re going to find your way through it.

There was a question that came up. I want to come back to Givaudan and others but in particular, to follow up because we all like a good car crash. On the flip side, when you see innovation and entrepreneurs fail, make mistakes, approach things in the wrong way, what are some of the common tells and indicators that say, “You are doing something that isn’t going to get you where you want to go?” Any thoughts there?

The biggest roadblock there is ourselves. If we get to a point where we are not aware of what’s around us, whether it’s the conditions, the opportunities, and we’re not listening and taking in that feedback that’s coming in and not listening to your brain and heart, that’s where people can run into the biggest challenge. The biggest train wrecks I’ve seen are these hardheaded approaches where it’s my way or the highway. Nowadays, I don’t see that often anymore. I do see that still in large organizations who think that the path that they’re on is the only path. For the most part, what we see are entrepreneurs that do listen to others and advice of people like yourself and joining other people and other groups that can help support them is key. That’s the important part.

Usually, those who are reading are the train wrecks. I’ll add to that, one of the things I see a lot is that sometimes we get intoxicated by the drug of innovation. It’s exciting. It’s creative and there are entrepreneurs that are great innovators but struggle with being great business people. You need to know that, but one of the keys is the why and trying to employ a bit of empathy is, what is this innovation going to do? How’s it going to make the people who are going to buy it, the consumers of it? How’s it going to make their lives better? How is it going to solve a problem for them or meet an unmet need? How is it going to change the way, for example, maybe exploiting or using the resources of our planet or creating harm to our environment? Those are the questions you have to step back and ask yourself is the ‘why’ behind this and what’s the outcome? If I bring this innovation, if I birth this innovation and take it, what’s it going to do? Is it some cool shit that I’m doing on equipment and it makes my hearts soar? You need to understand that.

A lot of times, people will bring things to a market that is so niche and differentiated. There isn’t demand because they didn’t start with, “What is the problem that I’m solving? What is the unmet need that I’m filling?” One of the questions that came in was, “Why are bigger companies like Danone, Givaudan and Ingredion hanging around MISTA? What is it that they want to glean and understand from having access to these startups?” We get why startups want to have access to the big bench of talent, expertise and resources that these big companies have, but what’s in it for the big companies?

There are a couple of different answers because on our platform, we have big ingredient companies and we also have big CPG. I’ll start from the ingredient side. I would say that in the past, a company like Givaudan or Ingredion had a set way to get their new products out into the market. That was by listening to the big food companies who would come to them with a problem, ask for a solution and Givaudan or Ingredion will put a big research program together. We’d come up with a solution, solve their challenge. They would take the product to market and it all worked great until that no longer worked anymore when stage food companies began to disrupt the market. In addition to early-stage CPG companies disrupting the market, what we see because of access to capital, because of the ability for companies to be part of accelerators, incubators, and innovation hubs like MISTA, there are also these new ingredients and technologies that are coming to market.

Companies like Givaudan and Ingredion need to be able to understand how those new ingredients and technologies are going to be disruptive for their own business model. That’s one of the reasons that are interesting for a company like Givaudan or Ingredion is to explore what’s happening in the world of technology, ingredients, new innovation platforms, biotechnology and things like that. If you’re a CPG company, the interest there is also on the ingredient side, because if you’re going to differentiate yourself in the marketplace, putting out another flavor of yogurt or plant-based beverage is not going to move the needle. You have to come with new ingredient technologies. You have to come with some new things that can differentiate you. By being part of MISTA, these big food companies can explore and experience some of these things in a different way than they ever have before.

That’s important and there’s a bit of contagion that goes being around innovators and innovators that aren’t encumbered by bureaucracy or expert’s mind and have beginner’s mind. There’s a huge benefit. We’ve got a few more questions.

I have a great example to build on that if I could before we dive into the next thing. It’s an example of one of our big CPG members. We had an idea to launch in a new category that they were exploring. What we are able to do is we were able to bring the technology prowess of two different, big ingredient companies, the technology resources of that particular CPG company. Also, intermixed with all of that, we brought five startup companies that were bringing unique ingredients all together in the same place.

This was right before COVID shut everything down. We were able to bring all of those people in one location and the experience that they were able to create by working together was unbelievable. The feedback that we got from everybody, from startups, from the big ingredient companies, and the big CPG, they were blown away by the experience that they all came away with. They were able to then take that not only for that particular project, but they were also able to integrate that into other things. That’s the way that we’re driving innovation.

That’s a great example. Thanks for sharing that. Diving in, here’s the next question, any insight into how to introduce innovative products to consumers? I’m taking notes on this one because if you can answer it, I’m in.

That is certainly a huge question and a huge challenge.

One of the things that I always think about is bringing consumers into the innovation process or targeted consumers. What happens a lot is innovation happens external to consumer input and engaging your ideal or your belief of your ideal consumer in early and conversation in prototyping, in ideation around innovation helps narrow down that you are on target for solving a problem or anything along those lines. Have you seen anything like that or done anything like that within MISTA?

Yes. One of the ways that we are trying to better understand consumers, because ultimately if you can better understand and identify the consumer needs and wants you to have a much better chance of nailing the target. As we all know, the traditional method of doing consumer research is there are lots of flaws. We’re exploring with one of our startups called Thimus. They’re out of Italy and they’re a neuroscience company. What’s cool about this technology is that you’re able to put on a headset onto consumers and evaluate their brain activity to identify what is happening in their brain. What happens normally is you ask the consumer a question and you get all these biases, as they’re trying to think about how they should respond. You reduce the scientific value of that. With this technology, you’re able to read the brain activity and there is no way to essentially lie or not express what you’re truly thinking.

From that standpoint, we’re excited to apply this technology in different ways to better understand consumers. Also, another point for understanding consumers is I got off a call with Givaudan and we’re working on some descriptive language that can be incorporated into consumer work to better understand. One of the challenges is when you ask a consumer, what do they think about the strawberry flavor is, you have to have a language to articulate what it is they’re experiencing. Most consumers are not equipped to describe the flavor language, the textured language and we have the language, but then how do you deploy that and enable that in the consumer work? We’re excited about that to bring that to the forefront, to help us in the consumer research phase.

Here’s another question from Norman, “Are there concerns that MISTA, from the small startups, that their innovation/IP will be exploited by the large companies involved? How is that addressed?”

First of all, the primary response is that you, as an entrepreneur, get to drive your car. You get to decide on the level of permeability that you want to have potentially with a large company. First of all, if you’re uncomfortable with that, there is no requirement that you have to divulge anything to anybody. Secondly, by divulging, we’re never asking to divulge any secrets at all. From an IP perspective, we were protective of that and we’re protective of both the early-stage company and also the big company. As a practice, Givaudan have been in business for 250 years. We’ve been engaged with food companies for a long time. 

We’ve been working with competitors all the time. We have a long history of protecting somebody’s IP and trade secrets that we don’t share that from one to another. Finally, the model within MISTA, we bring in founding members for a reason, and it’s because those particular founding members have a desire to play in the open innovation space, in a trusting and reciprocal way. Our expectation is that we see good behavior from our founding members. It’s one of our key things that if we ever saw anything go sideways there, we would stop that immediately.

That’s how we protect and make sure all of that happens. On another note, we also talk about the fact that big food companies, their problem aren’t ideas. Their problem is executing ideas. Even if they have all these ideas and an entrepreneur can bring this idea, there are many challenges with these big food companies getting that idea to market because of all the internal politics. Not wanting to destroy existing brands and protecting. That’s the other reason is that they have a lot of other challenges besides figuring out other great ideas.

Not only is it a great question, it’s a bigger question and I don’t want to let it go without adding my two cents in and that is, we have decisions as entrepreneurs to make. One of those is the mindset and there is that distinction between the competitor’s and the collaborator’s mindset. Like Scott, I’m old as shit too, and I’ve been doing this for over many years. What I have found in my career, what I’ve experienced personally and witnessed time and time again, is that ultimately those who would adopt a competitor’s mindset lose to those who adopt a collaborator’s mindset. There is the risk of that’s biting you in the ass.

To a degree, when you get to highly technical IP or trade secrets, you keep those close to the best. In general, the more collaborative you are, the more trusting you are, the more full kimono you are, the more likely that returns back to you and speeds your innovation and ability to execute on that innovation. I give that as an encouragement to think through what is your mindset and ask yourself if you do skew towards the competitors’ mindset, “What is the worst that happens if some of this gets out?” To Scott’s point, a lot of the larger companies, their problem is ideas, expertise, execution and their own encumbrances by their bureaucracy.

What’s the risk of them knowing if they bring resources? I offer that as feedback as well. The next question is interesting as well. With what we’re seeing in eCommerce, what we anticipated happening, now are finally happening and happening rapidly. That’s the tipping of the scale where more and more consumers are finding their products around food, beverage, personal care, pet care and so forth online. As you approach innovation, how do you approach that shift? How do you start thinking through innovation as it relates to the way the product is going to flow to consumers?

There are a couple of things there. The first is I’ve been surprised at the types of products that are doing well in eCommerce. Some of the typical products like yogurt, for example in the past, I would have thought, “No way is a yogurt going to work on an eCommerce platform because of its short shelf life. It needs to remain chilled, getting it shipped and all that is impossible.” Having said that, we have an early-stage company that is doing well on the eCommerce platform with yogurt. I’ve been blown away by how creative companies can be on shipping and with our infrastructure in the US, it’s quite easy to do.

From a mindset standpoint, we don’t always have to think about shelf-stable and dry on eCommerce anymore. We can think more broadly about different platforms, forums, and functions that we may not have thought were relevant in that space. That’s one thing. The beauty is the ability to have a whole different level of engagement with the consumer on eCommerce is amazing because instead of having bricks and mortar and store and all this stuff in between you and the consumer, you have the ability to engage directly with them. For me, that is a new opportunity that has emerged. There are tons of opportunities to unlock, and more and more technologies are coming out for companies to engage with consumers in a different way, which I find exciting. That’s my perspective.

There’s going to be innovation to all aspects of eCommerce products, but also we’re seeing rapid improvement and reduction in costs as it relates to coaching, logistics and eCommerce. We’re seeing a willingness of consumers to pay for that convenience and safety of not going into stores. Some of that will wane and some of that will change. I also think it’s about choice and one of the things that are interesting to me is this concept of deconstruction. We’re seeing that a bit more. For example, a ready to drink beverage, you may have offered omnichannel, including eCommerce, but then also have a deconstructed stick pack powder version of it or something that’s specifically eCommerce so that you’re giving consumers the choice. I do wonder if in the halls of MISTA if there’ll be more attention to ingredients or products in a natural clean way, extend shelf life or reduce the need for refrigeration and things along those lines in products that are already well-established. The keys for eCommerce to execute at its best is to reduce weight, cube and temp requirements. I do think that’s going to take place. I’m curious if you’ve seen any of that starting yet, Scott.

Yeah. We’ve seen some technologies that will enhance shelf life that are natural ingredients of fresh food as well as packaged goods. On the bakery side, using cultures and natural organisms that out-compete the bad bacteria that technology is what’s going to be available to help us create long shelf life without having horrific label statements the consumers are opposed to. We see a number of opportunities in this space. I think that’s one big area opportunity-wise because of the conditions and opportunities as we mentioned right for disruption. If you have some ideas there, bring those forward because this is an area that is in need of further innovation and disruption.

There are a few other questions, but I’m going to push those to the side because what you offered here is something that I want to explore a little bit further and that is the concept of taking something from ideation to conceptual, to commercialize. If somebody has an idea or if somebody thinks that they’re onto something, as it relates to, “We’ve been playing with this, we have this concept of this idea of bringing this functional ingredient in or changing this formulation to do this so that we can increase shelf stability, reduce the need for refrigeration or for a freeze.” If they want to come and approach MISTA, how do they do that? What role can you play there in germinating that idea and taking it to the next level? We’ve talked mostly about preformed ideas coming in to lean on MISTA’s ecosystem and tools, technology and team. What about those that aren’t fully formed yet that is in the head?

That’s a space that differentiates us versus others is that we don’t require any proof of traction. We have companies that are part of MISTA that haven’t even created a company name. They have an idea and they’re trying to shape it and they need some help at shaping this concept and trying to figure out where it fits and then some support in creating that minimum viable product to prove it. We have a number of companies in that stage that we can help support. We have a model that allows easy access from a financial standpoint. We’re a membership model, so we never take equity of any company. That’s a great way to prove some of these things. The other way is through universities. If you have an opportunity to participate in some of these activities that are going on with universities, I would highly recommend that.

We are engaged a lot with UC Berkeley, who has an alternative protein program and they have a number of students that are testing out new ideas and bringing those to market. In fact, they’ve had two of those companies spin out into real companies and raise a lot of money. It’s a great way to go. We’re happy to help support, guide and navigate through that. We can reach out if you have an idea on an ingredient. We can connect to different ingredient companies, depending on what it is to help get some input and ideas on, “Do people think that’s viable? Do people think that there’s a model behind it? How would you go to market with that? Would you want to license that technology? Would you want to create your own ingredients?” All those things that we can help companies think through.

I didn’t want that to pass us by to have that little bit of a conversation. I apologize for going off the questions from that. Another question here is relating to the reality that one thing that COVID is exposed to. There’s been SKU proliferation. There’s been a lot of increase in the number of SKUs and the number of offerings on the shelf. That’s put some burden on supply chain and there has begun to be an effort by a lot of especially larger CPGs to work towards SKU rationalization. The question is, how is that reality? How has this concept of SKU rationalization put pressure on innovation?

It’s good pressure. No offense to anybody, but another flavor of the same thing for me is not innovation. You’re renovating the brand. You’re continuing to add new options for consumers, but that’s not innovation. By brands taking the position that they need to rationalize some of these SKUs, it then forces them to say, “What are we going to do?” From that, they’re going to be needed to be thinking about more breakthrough innovation on products. Instead of taking the same thing and having another SKU with a little bit less sugar or another flavor, they’re forced to think about, “How do I truly differentiate this to meet the consumer’s needs? What new ingredients can I bring in? What new technologies?” For me, it’s an exciting time because it’s opening up the doors. The marketing group of big companies is then turning to the research and development groups and saying, “What do we have? How do we bring something that’s truly differentiating to the market that’s going to address need A, B and C that we’ve identified?” It’s a great opportunity because then it clears some of the ways for some of these new transformational things to happen.

I couldn’t agree more and I’ll take it slightly different turn as well. There is a big difference between proliferation and innovation. Proliferation has been the mantra of many. You build distribution and then you start penetrating deeper in the stores you’re already in by proliferating your SKUs which are beginning to move into adjacency. Adjacency is an expanding category becoming a platform and there are elements of that which will always make sense for some brands. Here in this conversation, we’re talking a lot about product innovation, ingredient innovation, but that’s not the only form of innovation that’s available to you as founders. The customer experience, packaging, route to market, storytelling, and the way you engage is a place for innovation.

The real question is where can you best bring innovation? You should always have a commitment to an innovator’s mindset, but it always does not need to be product-driven. One of the things that I always find interesting about the way you framed MISTA initially in your brain and head, and the way you communicate and you talked about an innovation using the word optimization, that it’s food optimized. That’s the other thing that you can always be doing is, aging myself here, but it’s going back to the old $6 million man. We can make it stronger or faster. How do you consistently push yourself to take your products to the next level, make them better and more approachable, exciting to consumers, resilient to demands, all of those things? 

That’s the advantage of early-stage companies and smaller brands are that the ability to do that is not necessarily easier, but it is in some ways. It’s easier than large brands that get stuck in this place. I do believe that. Elliot, you’ve nailed it in. Innovation can be in walking around that product in 360 degrees and figuring out a number of different ways that sometimes big brands can’t do that gives you an advantage, whether it’s how you go to market and stories like as you mentioned. That’s an exciting point for early-stage companies.

It’s critical to think that way is that, where is the best path for me to innovate as a founder, as a product, as a brand and ask that? I like your analogy of walking around at 360 degrees and looking at it and that’s great. I’m going to go off script because I have insider information about this. I find this more important than ever before but always felt it was important and something you haven’t discussed MISTA in general, but is this concept about founder development, leadership and the ability to improve a founder’s ability to be a founder, to be an entrepreneur. That’s something that I know with Lisa’s involvement in the team at MISTA, that you have a holistic approach to the founders coming in, that you’re not just trying to build a better product, but you’re also working to optimize the founder themselves. I thought maybe you can give a little bit about that and how you approach that because I find it unique. 

Our tagline is, “We optimize ideas, products, people and investments.” Elliot’s talking about the people part of that, so how do you optimize people? It truly is this amazing program that my wife, Lisa, has developed and it’s called the Neuroscience of Change and Innovation. It’s about understanding how our brains and our bodies work together to drive, first of all, awareness and secondly, innovation and adapting to change. There are some models and tools that we deploy to help individuals and teams optimize how they work and most efficiently to get the best out of themselves and their teams.

It’s super exciting the work that she’s doing and bringing to both early-stage companies and large organizations. Anybody that has any questions on that, I’m happy to walk them through. On one hand, it’s simple, Elliot, you’ve been through it. It’s two models and four tools for change, but with that, it’s powerful in terms of how you can deploy that. It can be deployed not only on the business side, but even in your personal life in terms of being more aware and understanding things around you and being able to navigate that. It’s a cool program that we have as part of this.

First of all, those who are reading, don’t you worry. I’m going to be hitting Lisa up to be a guest on the system as well because I find her work fascinating. Also having to go through it myself, I find it incredibly useful. I wanted to bring it forward because I don’t think you can disconnect innovation from the person doing it. Being an entrepreneur in its best of times is hard but being an entrepreneur and an innovator without having the personal toolbox to do it, to optimize your ability to do that is a limiting factor that we didn’t talk about and I wanted to make sure to revisit that. One of the questions not asked, but in many of the founders that I’ve spoken with is, “How do they get their arms and minds around innovation?” What I was thinking, Scott, is point some good resources. You mentioned a book and a few other things, but if there are some things that you can suggest that those reading might find helpful to them as they think about the innovator’s journey, so to speak, where would you point them?

I’ve already mentioned the book. For me, that was pivotal in how I think about everything. It comes down to this mindset and coming back to what we talked about with Lisa a little bit. It’s simple. We talk about a continuum if you could imagine, and on the right-hand side would be living in the creation and on the left-hand side would be living in survival. In order to innovate, and there’s a lot behind it, and if you go through Lisa’s program, you’ll learn about it. The frontal lobe that we all have in our brain is impacted heavily by our state of being. If we are living in stress and fear, that frontal lobe is shut down. It’s not as effective as it can be. For innovators, we have to find ways to make sure that is switched on that we’re not living in fear. We’re not living in survival and that we can put ourselves into that creation aspect and mindset.

I would recommend doing some research around that understanding you as an individual and how your brain works and making sure that you can maximize that at all times. None of us live in creation all the time. Things pop up that push us into survival but if we are aware of that, we can have medic cognition and step away from that and understand, and watch ourselves in this mode, we can move through that faster than before. That will help improve your ability to innovate. I highly recommend anything you can read about and learn about in the neuroscience piece is key to be the best innovator you possibly can be. From a practical standpoint, it’s engaging with other likeminded people in this space, learn from them, stand on the shoulders of others who have paved the way, as I have done and as Elliot has done as well and others. That would be my recommendation. 

That’s perfect timing. You brought us right to the top. If people want to learn more about you and MISTA, what is the best to do so?

You can go to MISTAFood.com and learn more from our website. We’re going to be updating that in the near future. We’re a startup ourselves, we’re evolving that, we’re constantly trying to improve but you can go there. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. If you want to reach me directly, Elliot, if you can put in my email address, you’re more than welcome to put me that way.

Thanks for doing this with me. Enjoy your time and send my love for Lisa. Thanks, everyone, for joining. We’ll talk soon. Take care. 

Thanks, Elliot. I appreciate it. Ciao. 

Important Links

• MISTA

• Givaudan

• IndieBio Model

• Ingredion

• Danone

• Mars

• You Can Kill An Idea, But You Can’t Kill An Opportunity

• Thimus

• MISTAFood.com

• LinkedIn – Scott May

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