As one of the world’s largest brewers, Carlsberg wanted to create a greener beer. The bottles of the Danish brewer have already a green color for decades, but the ‘Cheers to Green Ideas’ competition was launched to improve the environmental impact of beer. The company has incorporated an open innovation model and asked consumers and companies from all over the world to submit ideas about greening the beer. Using the wisdom of the crowd, Carlsberg wanted to have a positive effect on the environment through drinking beer.

 

“We believe that business has a leading role to play in developing concepts such as the circular economy or closed-loop practices to drive positive change.” – Cees ‘t Hart, CEO, Carlsberg Group

 

Carlsberg is aware of their position in today’s world, and therefore know that they can contribute to a more sustainable environment. To achieve this, they created an open innovation model. They opened op for external ideas and collaborations. For instance for the ‘Cheers to Green Ideas’ competition, with the collaboration with Sustainia, a think tank that wants to create a more sustainable future. Together, Carlsberg and Sustainia wanted to build on the world of tomorrow through launching a sustainability competition in 2015.

 

The challenge

In 2015, Carlsberg announced the ‘Cheers to Green Ideas’ competition. During a three-week period, consumers, firms, and entrepreneurs from all over the world had the possibility to submit their ideas about making the Carlsberg’s beer more sustainable. The competition highlighted three key challenges to consider: how to package beer in an eco-friendly way, how to increase recycling, and how to use less water and energy during production. In total, six finalists were selected out of the 162 submitted ideas by a Carlsberg jury. Two awards were to handed out to the best ideas: Cheers to Green Ideas Award, mainly intended for companies and entrepreneurs, and the JC Jacobsen Special Award, intended for consumers.

 

 

From closed to open

This competition shows that Carlsberg has an open innovation model. They are open to collaborating with other companies and organizations, and the input of consumers. Even though many companies benefit from the transition from closed to open, this often does not go without resistance, and therefore does not happen overnight. The process often faces organizational, social, and psychological barriers.

 

It’s a change process

Opening up an organization requires change, demanding for a different mindset. While changing, firms can face various barriers. Organizational barriers can be encountered with all activities that have to do with implementing co-creation (complex governance, operations, intellectual property etc.). Also, there can be psychological and social barriers, which can occur in a team or among employees (inertia, fear of the unknown, not invented hear syndrome etc.).

 

 

Get ready for co-creation

Managing the process from closed to open well can result in a profitable business, but where should firms pay attention to? Using the following steps can help to overcome the aforementioned barriers.

– Start with why: explain why change is need

– Shrink the change: divide the change into small steps

– Go for direct result: generate quick wins along the process

– Cut the leash: give autonomy and show value for individuals

– Do it together: create a feeling of unity and shared identity through team building to create trust and encourage people

– Discover the feeling: show other successful cases to let people experience it to make them more at ease

– Set the scene: provide a place by literally creating a co-creation environment apart from the daily business, inside or outside the company walls

– Make it happen: incorporate the change in every activity and decision to make it a natural behavior

– Get the board in: make sure higher management support the change and let them show their support with a rewarding system

 

Following these steps can helps firms to overcome barriers from going to an open business model and have successful co-creation competitions just as Carlsberg.

 

References

Carlsberg, 2015: https://carlsberggroup.com/news-archive/carlsberg-launches-cheers-to-green-ideas-crowd-sourcing-campaign-and-awards-the-best-sustainable-beer-solutions/

Carlsberg, 2016: https://carlsberggroup.com/sustainability/sustainability-at-carlsberg/

GlobeNewswire, 2015: https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2015/11/26/790517/0/en/Finalists-revealed-in-Carlsberg-s-Cheers-to-Green-Ideas-Award.html

Fronteer, 2011: http://fronteer.amsterdam/media/uploads/2016/10/161012-FRONTEER-WHITEPAPER-2.pdf

Sustainia, 2015: http://www.sustainia.me/carlsberg/#solutions

Sutainia, 2017: http://www.sustainia.me/about-sustainia/

Sustainable brand, 2015: http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/collaboration/ hannah_furlong/carlsberg_saying_cheers_crowdsourced_solutions_sustainab

Who doesn’t want to taste a beer that has been chosen as best beer amongst a crowd of over 25,000 people from all across the USA? In 2012, Budweiser introduced Project 12. The American brewer challenged its twelve brewmasters to create a unique beer recipe. Only one could be the winner, resulting in the Budweiser Black Crown.

Project 12 is a typical crowdsourcing project. As the name describes, crowdsourcing is a type of outsourcing, utilizing a crowd of people instead of an external organization (Howe, 2006). Since the introduction of the concept in 2006, the technology industry was one of the early adopters. However, in the last couple of years, this industry has been overtaken by the fast-moving customer goods (FMCG) industry (Roth et al., 2015). The evolution of crowdsourcing usage per sector is depicted in Figure 1 (Roth et al, 2015).

Figure 1: Evolution of crowdsourcing usage

Crowd consultation

Companies can use different ways to exploit the crowd. The main purposes for crowdsourcing are problem solving, gathering ideas, collecting designs, and outsourcing tasks. With problem solving and ideation contests, the crowd comes up with the ideas and solutions. Decisions on the results are often done internally by companies. Budweiser used a variation on this crowdsourcing model. The brewer created the beers itself (the ‘’ideas’’ / ‘’solutions’’), and used the crowd as consultants (‘’decision makers’’). Hence, the company reversed the typical crowdsourcing model. In summer of 2012, the company traveled across the USA to get in contact with thousands of customers at local events, festivals, and other activities to gather opinions. As such, the participants acted as consultants for Budweiser.

Project 12

In 2012, Budweiser asked twelve of its brewmasters, located in the USA, to create a distinctive beer recipe worthy of the Budweiser name. The beer recipe had to be inspired by regional influences of their brewing location. Out of these twelve, six beers were chosen to join the Budweiser brewers on their tour across America. Consumers with many different backgrounds had the opportunity to taste the different beers and rate them on taste, flavor, freshness, and style before picking their favorites. A summer-long sampling program resulted in the biggest focus group in brand history, maybe even beer history, according to AB InBev, parent company of Budweiser (Brady, 2012). See the video below about Project 12.

There can be only one

Eventually, three brews were distributed in limited edition. One of them was the winner, called ‘Black Crown’. Each beer was named after the zipcode of the brewery location it was created. The  winning beer was introduced using TV ads and even a 30-second Super Bowl commercial. However, the question is whether this expensive marketing tools were really necessary, since Project 12 was already a marketing tool itself. Crowdsourcing projects namely have an advantage that the crowd becomes eager for the product to come out. Participants already become brand ambassadors through spreading the word during the project (IdeaConnection, 2014).

Whether these marketing expenses were really necessary or not, Project 12 turned out to be really successful. The success was so enormous that the brewer decided to launch a similar project the following year (IdeaConnection, 2014). Hence, Budweiser benefitted from their crowdsourcing strategy.

Nowadays, Budweiser is still the most important brand of Ab InBev (largest brewer worldwide), and is even the best selling beer in America (Statista, 2016). That’s why Budweiser is called ‘’The King of Beers’’.

References

Howe, J. (2006). The rise of crowdsourcing. Wired magazine, 14(6), 1-4.

Roth, Y., Pétavy, F., & Céré, J. (2015). The state of crowdsourcing in 2015. eYeka Analyst Report.

Brady, S. (2012), AB InBev Woos Beer-Drinkers With Crowdsourced, Locally Developed Bud Flavors, brandchannel [Accessed 17-02-2017 from: http://brandchannel.com/2012/11/05/ab-inbev-woos-beer-drinkers-with-crowdsourced-locally-developed-bud-flavors/].

IdeaConnection (2014), Crowdsourcing a New Beer Bevarage with Budweiser [Accessed 17-02-2017 from: https://www.ideaconnection.com/open-innovation-success/Crowdsourcing-a-New-Beer-Beverage-with-Budweiser-00510.html]

IdeaScale (2017), Crowdsourcing Ideation [Accessed 17-02-2017 from: https://ideascale.com/service/crowdsourcing-ideation-2/].

Statista (2016), Sales of the leading domestic beer brands of the United States in 2016 [Accessed 17-02-2017 from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/188723/top-domestic-beer-brands-in-the-united-states/].