Judith van Peij has been with Royal DSM for 10 years, and has been the Innovation Manager for Baking & Confectionery for the past three. She is a food technologist at heart, with a clear vision of managing innovation teams including R&D, operations and commercial.
Catalina Mihu: You joined DSM 10 years ago. How has the approach for new product development evolved in this time and what are some of your favorite contributions in this regard?
Judith van Peij: I was already working as a food technologist as a food technologist when I joined DSM. Coming from an ingredients company, I was already somewhat familiar with how the industry was working. In the 10 years that have passed since then, we have transitioned from being an ingredients company to being a solutions provider. In the beginning, I was more focused on applications (and not so much on innovation at that time). But, I felt that there was a need for us to do something in the shorter term, by adding not only focused R&D projects to our pipeline, but also making more use of our existing products in other types of applications, throughout the company. I like to work with people, and I think that there is added value that can be gained from working with ingredients that have been already developed to transform them into (a part of) a solution rather than simply offering them as an ingredient.
