Nestlé Health Sciences

Using innovation to unlock the nutrition opportunity in Type 2 Diabetes

Challenge

Nestlé Health Sciences saw that there was a growing opportunity for nutrition products and services in the management of Type 2 Diabetes and needed a partner to identify an impactful strategic position for their business – as well as a prioritization framework and clear innovation pipeline to unlock it.

Clarity

This was Nestlé Health Sciences’ first official venture into the Type 2 Diabetes space. While they had a number of relevant existing products, these were sitting under different global brands; internal knowledge was also spread disparately across business functions. They needed to focus on reducing complexity and creating a new roadmap for growth – but first we needed to provide clarity to build a strong foundation.

Bringing patient and healthcare provider needs to the forefront

Solution

We worked collaboratively with Nestlé Health Sciences for over six months to bring patient and HCP needs to the forefront. This was the critical piece in understanding their potential role in the nutritional management of Type 2 Diabetes.

The process began with a period of business and market immersion to uncover internal hypotheses and clarify where unknowns remained, working closely with multiple stakeholders across the globe. Given varying perspectives and levels of market maturity, we leveraged a diverse suite of tactics such as mining existing data and insights, exploring trends, and analyzing competitor activity. We also looked for inspiration from parallel categories to see what was driving results.

By consolidating current understanding and filling knowledge gaps, we were able to create a holistic view of patient and healthcare provider (HCP) nutrition needs in the Type 2 Diabetes space and were able to build out initial profiles of potential patient targets, map their patient journey, and understand the role that HCPs played at each point – meaning that we could begin to focus on the biggest opportunities within the journey.

This was then translated into distinct strategic opportunity platforms, which we used as springboards to develop product and service innovation ideas in a two-day co-creation workshop for the global Nestlé Health Sciences team. We explored two key objectives together:

Build on the insights underpinning our opportunity platforms and fill any knowledge gaps through in-person discussions with patients and HCPs.

Utilize the opportunity platforms and supplementary insights to generate product and service ideas that delivered against the unmet needs of our targets.

Impact

The ideas that came out of the workshop were then developed into written concepts to test with patients and HCPs in three focus markets: the US, Brazil, and Australia. Running research in these markets – and stress-testing the concepts with both consumers and HCPs – provided further clarity on how the concepts could be further refined to address global and local needs. This exercise also provided insights into how to drive brand and product engagement through strengthening Nestlé Health Science’s position in the relevant markets.

Following concept optimization, we built an innovation pipeline based on strategic growth criteria and business capability, outlining the key opportunities for Nestlé Health Science at each stage of implementation.

To set future teams up for success, we created insight packs, detailed needs-based consumer and HCP personas, and a patient journey highlighting changing needs from prediabetes all the way through to advanced Type 2 Diabetes. These supplementary materials were thoughtfully designed to provide guidance and a foundation of knowledge for future growth.

Since then, actions taken by Nestlé Health Sciences in the Type 2 Diabetes space have been built from the created strategy. The work we did together has ultimately enabled the team to do two key things:

Strengthen the relevance of their existing nutritional solutions, specifically through weight management and glucose control; and

Expand their capabilities to meet growing opportunities in the nutritional management of Type 2 Diabetes through acquiring new businesses.