Three Ways to Build a Stronger Edge in 2026 Innovation

Every company seeks a competitive edge when innovating for the next hit product. What are strategies that create unique leverage within crowded categories of tough competitors?

Today, artificial intelligence provides access to more data than ever involving products and trends. However, this abundance of information can be overwhelming and unreliable. To effectively focus innovation efforts and leverage solid insights for a competitive advantage in 2026, we believe that three factors are paramount.

1. Spott emerging market trends before your competitors
2. Tap into the underlying details and nuances that inform major trends
3. Utilize a unified and integrated end-to-end innovation process

A Deep Dive into the Future of Food & Beverage

Spot market trends early

Being early to market with products grounded in market trends and driven by sustained changes in consumer behavior is a considerable strategic advantage. But how do we uncover these emerging trends?

With decades of experience in innovation, we’ve seen that engaging with startups is a key trend-spotting strategy. Early-stage founders address real needs and are closely connected to emerging behaviors and trends.

One example of how we stay connected to this community is through JPG Resources’ Founder Cohorts and Advising programs, which collaborate with hundreds of startups each year. These new brands represent the future of food and beverage, and they are also test driving communication and execution strategies around these evolving consumer behaviors.

An additional way to spot emerging trends lies in establishing connections with innovation hubs. By collaborating with organizations such as MISTA in San Francisco, we gain insight into ingredient innovation as well and this brings ingredient technology advances into focus. This perspective helps generate options to differentiate products within competitive market segments through the latest performance or nutritional solutions.

We also recommend developing expertise in monitoring restaurant trends. Through our Chefs’ Council partnership we can access a network of more than 100 active restaurant chefs, which enhances our innovation process with culinary insights and points to the trends that will soon be shaping CPG innovations.

Many trends—from the elevation of hot spice, to dill pickle flavors, to the rise and rise of global cuisines—originate in restaurants before transitioning into CPG. We now see portion sizes shrinking, small-plate prevalence increasing, and other efforts to accommodate the GLP-1 consumer.

Chefs are responding in real-time to changing consumer behaviors within the restaurant environment. Having direct connections and a proven process for generating insights from this channel provides valuable opportunities to observe and learn.

Tap into the underlying details and nuances that inform major trends

Many of today’s media articles discuss current trends in our industry and they focus on broad, overarching patterns that are widely known. More valuable insights come from identifying the specific details, nuances, and less obvious behaviors that influence these trends. Understanding these factors can provide a deeper perspective and distinct competitive advantage for innovation.

To understand the details behind trends, one of the best approaches, we believe, is to engage in structured and purposeful conversations with consumers.

For instance, consider the current trend in Asian cuisine. While its growth is obvious, it is important to understand which aspects of this trend are most significant to consumers—such as specific spices, flavors, and textures that cue authenticity or elevate taste experience.

Through strategically designed consumer research, we can uncover nuances such as differing consumer preferences for Japanese curry compared to Malaysian or Chinese curry. As authenticity comes to the forefront, the details of texture and flavor profiles play a pivotal role in shaping consumer perceptions.

We recently held focus groups examining noodle formats and textures which further demonstrated to our client how important these nuances are to consumers. These seemingly minor details uncovered through thoughtful research can provide a meaningful competitive advantage to product design.

Use a unified, integrated end-to-end innovation process

Many food and beverage businesses have innovation processes that may be more fragmented than they realize. The process may lack continuity as teams work on “their part of the process” or only collaborate in surface level ways. Many companies also handle innovation through multiple agencies and these people and their insights are often segregated from the team creating and commercializing projects.

This fragmented approach can result in communication and understanding gaps, with important information and nuances being overlooked. These gaps then lead to shifts in execution, as intentionality and insight is muddied with each handoff in the process.

Establishing a fully integrated process that links consumer insights, market analysis, and trend identification with technical feasibility (including formulation, procurement, and manufacturing) and a clear retail sales plan is essential to developing an effective and efficient innovation pipeline.

Drawing on our experience with successful high-growth companies, we know that a key element is ensuring that product development experts are involved in each innovation project from the earliest stages of insights gathering, ideation, and market analysis. It’s also important to include a feasibility study in both the ideation and insights phases.

This early feasibility step is key to making adjustments early while all voices are still in the process and there is time to align the concept with real-life constraints. Also, by defining the sales plan early in the process, it ensures that channel, price, and competitive set is clear from inception rather than serving as a reactive step late in the process.

We’ve repeatedly seen that companies gain a major advantage in speed and staying true to the insights by innovating with a unified team and end-to-end vision.

Put it all together

Ultimately, while keeping up with known and reported trends has value, a process that delivers more detailed insights will set your innovation apart.

Identifying signals and trends ahead of competitors, digging into the details driving those trends, and building a skilled, collaborative, end-to-end team and process are strategies that we’ve seen enhance the innovation process and offer measurable competitive advantages.