Successful change is rarely about having the perfect solution

Recently, I had a conversation for a podcast with the Institute for Collaboration about what it really takes to work together in complex environments, not in theory, but in practice.

Looking back, I realised how much my own journey shaped that podcast. I did not begin my career in food, but in energy, followed by chemicals, then sustainable materials, and later circular economy roles. Across sectors and countries, I kept encountering the same pattern. Even with brilliant ideas and strong technologies in place, progress slowed whenever collaboration became complicated.

During the podcast recording, we laughed about moments that many of you will recognise, walking into what feels like “the lion’s den”, discovering that collaboration can feel a lot like sailing with changing winds, and realising that not everything that matters fits neatly into an Excel spreadsheet. We also talked about something more counterintuitive: that stopping an initiative at the right moment can sometimes be the most responsible leadership decision.

Out of that conversation came more than a hundred practical insights (AI helped to organise them neatly), distilled into ten key learnings about collaboration grounded in real experience. One lesson stood out clearly: successful change is rarely about having the perfect solution, but about creating the conditions in which people dare to work together, show vulnerability, and move closer together with a curious mindset. To understand each other’s interests and speak each other’s language.

This is also at the heart of our upcoming Innovation Insights event. Moving from early adopters to the mainstream in healthy and sustainable eating requires understanding consumer behaviour, motivations and societal dynamics, and creating spaces where new narratives can be explored. Only then can healthy, plant protein, circular and regenerative innovations truly scale.