The virtuous cycle of trust. Unveiling clues to successful innovation in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods industry

PurposeThis paper aims to shed light on features of successful innovation and on the role played by downstream open innovation (OI) dynamics in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry. It also explores the reasons for the decline in the number of disruptive innovations in this industry in the European Union (EU).Design/methodology/approachThe authors interpret the data in a Kantar consumer panel dataset on disruptive innovations in Spain through an exploratory research including in-depth interviews with 19 managers in the industry.FindingsResults show that downstream open innovation in this industry is mostly limited to the executional stage in the process and highlight the crucial r…