ABSTRACT
Academics, practitioners, and policymakers have at last started to see innovation in the food and beverage (F & B) processing industry under a new light. In contrast with other industries, innovation in this sector had been seen as a marginal issue for a long period of time. Now food scares, retailers’ increased protagonism in the maintenance of food quality and safety, consumers’ increasing awareness of nutritional ingredients, quick expansion of the market for functional foods and public regulation on environmental matters affecting food production have brought the innovation-related issues to the forefront. Second, a new methodology of analysis is consolidating; recent empirical research (see Chapter 1 in this volume) has suggested that innovation in this industry should not be analyzed at the F & B company level exclusively, without studying agents of change in the rest of the food chain. New analyses take into account previously neglected agents, namely the clients, retailers, and suppliers of this industry, the regional clusters of F & B firms, and the national or regional systems of innovation that contribute knowledge to the sector and its auxiliary industries. As a result, the perception of the F & B industry, traditionally seen as a low-tech industry, is starting to change.
