On Oct. 20th,Yushan Academy Centre for Design and Innovation X BreakLinetogether took UWC and local students on a "safari" to explore global frontier food innovations and technologies within one day of experiential workshop.
The founder of future food lab - YEAST, Food Portfolio Director at IDEO and mentor to China’s first food accelerator - BitsxBites, Federico shared his insight into food design and food system through his personal experience shifting from being a fine-dining chef to a food designer.
He dived into a series of case studies and industry relevant examples to expose students to the major challenges and advanced innovations across the different stages of the food value chain, including Impossible Foods - reinventing how food is made, Bella Puppa - creating value from waste and CVI - transforming food with data.
He notonly explained issues of food industry relatingto sustainability and how couldfood design create a greater impact over our food system, but also introduced participants to emerging careers and opportunities in the food industry, in order to inspire students to discover challenges and opportunities on food R&D, business model innovation and system transformation.
Having worked extensively in product innovation for global food giants such as KFC, McDonalds, Wanza Matou and so on, host Federico shared his methods in designing food innovation. Students weresplit into 5 groups to design their own food innovation solutions in given challenge scenarios. Each scenario given represents the main challenge our food system is facing.
"The Future of Food Workshop has really changed how I view food in general. After the workshop, I do hopewe can make food more sustainable fromcultivation to finally cooking it."
“未來食品工作坊真的改變了我對食品的一貫看法。通過參與這個工作坊,我希望我們可以讓食物從種植到最后烹飪都變得更可持續(xù)化。”
With the guidance of the workshop host, each group identified the pain point in their particular challenge and successfully designed an innovative solution through extensive teamwork. But only ideas are not enough for real innovation. Each group wasgiven a new challenge - use food and nonfood artifacts to rapid-prototype and materialize their solution demo.
During solution pitch, participants asked questions on each other’s solutions. In the end, 3 award winners were selected with Best Innovative Solution Award, Best Business Potential Award and Best Social Impact Award.
"I really enjoyed this Future of Food Innovation Workshop. It not only stimulated our imagination about the possibilities of food in the future but also inspired us to rethink the relationship between food and the ecological environment. A simple topic sparked deep meanings."
Future of Food Design Innovation Workshop is only a start. To educate the next generation for the future, Yushan Academy Centre for Design and Innovation X BreakLine will together bring more future-oriented workshops for students in Changshu and beyond.
United World Colleges(世界聯(lián)合學(xué)院,簡稱UWC)是當(dāng)今世界獨具一格的全球性教育運動,從全世界150多個國家和地區(qū)挑選優(yōu)秀的學(xué)生。UWC創(chuàng)建于1962年,旨在通過教育,聯(lián)合不同的國家、民族和文化,從而促進世界和平與可持續(xù)發(fā)展。在UWC,來自不同種族、文化和家庭經(jīng)濟背景的學(xué)生一起生活、學(xué)習(xí),通過UWC的教育,培養(yǎng)學(xué)生成為具有國際視野和社會服務(wù)精神的未來領(lǐng)袖。