🌟 Not every valuable lesson happens in a lecture hall and this two-day workshop was a good reminder of that.
Organized by DIL and led by industry expert Holger Toschka, the session pulled the curtain back on something students rarely get a proper look at during their studies: how food innovation actually works inside a company, when business realities, team dynamics, market pressures, and the occasional uncomfortable truth are all in the room at the same time.
Over two days, students worked through the fundamentals of R&D and company workflows, exploring how food businesses operate as connected systems across different teams when it comes to developing new products or adopting novel technologies. One of the sharper moments in the workshop was the discussion around market risk concepts like self-cannibalization. It is the kind of problem that sounds abstract until you are sitting in front of a real business case and realizing there is no clean answer.
What made it land was the format. Every student had the chance to present a business idea rooted in their own background, which was then examined, challenged, and reshaped by the group and the mentor not to tear the idea down, but to stress-test it against the frameworks and assumptions that industry actually uses. Several students later said it was one of the best workshops they had attended. More than a few wished it had gone on for longer.
A big thank you to DIL for putting this together, and to Holger Toschka for a workshop that felt nothing like a workshop.
