burcon blog

Written by Paul L.

On Wednesday May 16, 2012

Being in the agri-technology sector, we are acutely aware of any new innovations on the market – especially those surrounding the extraction of food ingredients.  With seven billion mouths to feed, we are hard-pressed to find new ways to get the most out of the limited resources we have.  So let’s talk a bit about disruptive technologies in the food industry.

Once in a long while, a disruptive innovation arises and as a result entire markets are changed or displaced.  If you are currently reading this on your iPhone or iPad, you’ll understand what I’m saying.  Following these disruptive changes, we often get long periods of macro-innovations where small and minor improvements are made to sustain the competition in the market.  There are many instances where all innovation is lost and a period of stagnancy persists until another disruptive innovation comes along.  The cycle then repeats itself.  In agriculture, the stagnant periods can last for decades.  Afterall, we are all susceptible to complacency and the mentality of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

Wikipedia defines “disruptive innovation” as the following:

A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology. The term is used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically first by designing for a different set of consumers in the new market and later by lowering prices in the existing market.

Here at Burcon, we like to think that we’re at the core of disruptive technologies.  We believe that our CLARISOY™ soy protein technology can disrupt and even displace existing soy protein processes.  We’ve created a new market of clean-tasting low pH beverages for soy protein and with further macro-innovations, CLARISOY™ could enter into new food and beverage markets.  Our Peazazz™ pea protein is also another game-changer, allowing pea proteins to enter into food and beverage markets where it previously could not.