The Three-three Principle Helps Yili's Innovation Stand Still

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Editor: Anna HU( ID: Nana – annahu), Vicky Gan

“As a practitioner of food industry, we have clearly felt the stress and urgency of industrial innovation driven by consumption upgrading.” During the “Food & Beverage Innovation Forum 2017” held in Shanghai on April 19th, Zhang Jianqiu, the Executive President of Yili Group, which ranks as the Asia’s Top 1 and the World’s Top 8 dairy enterprise, said so.With the “three-three principle” of innovation, Yili gives the answer for sustainable growth in food industry.

How does the food industry continue to grow under the pressure of consumption upgrade? The executive president of Yili Group Zhang Jianqiu gave his answer – the “three-three principle” of innovation.

Different from the single-point or multiple-points innovation in other dairy enterprises, Yili Group has formed a full-chain innovation pattern. This is not only refers to the fact that Yili has established an innovation system covering the whole industry chain from upstream, midstream to downstream, but also means Yili Group has developed a complete methodology of innovation, internally called “three-three principle.”

“Three-three principle” of Innovation, Originated from Consumers

It is reported that the “three-three principle” of innovation of Yili contains two parts: innovative cognition and innovative practice. Innovative cognition is Yili’s famous “three questions on innovation”: Does it meet the consumers’ demands or not? Does it comply with the trends of consumption? Can it expand the development space?

These three questions link with each other, and the comprehensive understanding of innovation can only be formed by answering them so as to promote innovation practice. Then who will answer these three key questions about innovation? We entrepreneurs? The answer is definitely negative, because the truest reply relies on the consumers.

In order to find the answer from the consumers, Yili builds in-depth cooperation with Wal-Mart, Vanguard, Wing Fai and other retailers in entity channel, integrating the information from more than 500 million salesterminals, 1 billion consumers and a large number of partners, using big data technology to analyze the nutritional needs of consumers towards different categories of dairy products, and then meet these demands. In addition to the entity channel, Yili has also set up a big data radar platform based on the large amount of data produced by vast users of the Internet, which covers more than 250 data sources, and the effective data takes up more than 90% data of the whole network.

Through the “Skynet” woven with online and offline big data, even the slight changes in consumers’ demands can be captured. For example, Yili upgraded China’s first “maternal-fetal ecosystem” in 2015, through which consumers can ask questions at any time, dialogue with experts, participate in activities and O2O consumption. With the help of China’s “Know the Best about Mums” maternal-fetal ecosystem service, Yili can get insight into the deep needs of Chinese mothers and the nutritional status of Chinese babies, paving the way for the next innovation.

Innovation is Mission,“Three-three principle” Helps to Realize the Dream of Healthy China

With the answer from consumers, Yili continues to promote the implementation of the “three-three principle” in innovative practice: management innovation + product innovation + brand innovation.

In fact, management innovation is almost a normal state in Yili. In recent years, with the accelerated pace of globalization, Yili also underwent a period of rapid expansion to the world in the aspect of management innovation, among which the best example is that Yili established strategic partnership with SGS, LRQA and Intertek to improve the ability of the food quality and the safety risk control further.

With the support of management innovation, the difficulty of product innovation is greatly reduced. But as is known to all, product innovation needs the insistent spirit. For example, Yili has carried out breast milk research since 2003; In 2007, China’s first breast milk research database was established; In 2008, Yili applied the research results from breast milk database to a ” PRO-KIDO ” series of infant formula milk powder products, which successfully realized the lactation of α-lactalbumin and β-casein. It can be said that the success of the PRO-KIDO infant formula milk powder is the result of Yili’s research investmentin breast milk.

Compared with management innovation and product innovation, brand innovation is undoubtedly the most difficult. In the era of mobile Internet, the iterative update of brand gets faster and faster. On the one hand, it requires Yili to continue to actively refresh and enrich its own brand front; on the other hand it determines that Yili need to tell a good brand story of Chinese dairy, which helps the brand have more long-term vitality. In the “2017 Brand Finance® Global Dairy Brand Value List” and “2017 BrandZ ™ China’s Most Valuable Top 100 Brands” published recently, Yili was reelected as the top one in terms of brand value in food industry with the affirmation of the consumers and counterparts.

Yili’s innovative methodology “three-three principle” is the perfect combination of innovative cognition and innovative practice. Innovation has long been the key to the conversion between old and new kinetic energy, and even has risen to the height of the industry mission. As Yili Group’s Executive President Zhang Jianqiu said: “Yili’s mission is to innovate constantly. On the one hand it will make Chinese dairy industry bigger and stronger to strengthen the international voice and competitiveness of Chinese dairy industry; On the other hand it will provide consumers with healthy, safe and nutritional high-quality milk to achieve the dream of healthy China.