Gil Horsky wears two hats in his role as Director of Innovation in SnackFutures within Mondelēz International. As the company’s independent innovation and future hub, SnackFutures is all about launching new businesses under the Mondelēz umbrella and supporting start-ups. 

Secondly, Gil is based in Tel Aviv and spends his “evenings” connecting Mondelēz to the Israeli innovation ecosystem. With his ear to the ground across industries, Gil is an avid proponent of innovation and ‘intrapreneurship’.

This interest in constantly seeking new horizons is linked with mindset and curiosity, according to Gil. Any company can be intrapreneurial as long as they are “childlike” and take risks. He says “the best marketeers are children. They’re curious, they ask on everything ‘why?’, they hardly have any biases [and] they observe things that we take for granted.”

Our discussion about innovation revealed that Gil has two Shiny New Objects; firstly, the way that technology is changing how market research is done. New ways to reach people, such as social media, allow companies to track how consumers feel about their products and give them quick insight turnaround. And AI and machine learning give us the capability to project and predict how products will impact consumers.

However, Gil is a fan of “IRL (in real life) testing” and standing in shops with samples for consumers to try. He agrees that “big companies rarely stand in a farmer’s market to test ideas,” but this can be an invaluable way to add depth to the data collected through technology. In his view, “we need to be connected to consumers.”

In a departure from marketing topics, Gil’s second Shiny New Object is food tech – specifically, how innovation is changing the future of food. This includes lab-grown and plant-based alternatives to animal food, as well as the traceability of our food and other food trends.

For more on Gil’s love of concise books, his advice on being intrapreneurial and his excitement about the future of technology in food, check out the podcast in fullhere.

Subscribe to the ‘Shiny New Object’ Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube andSoundcloud.

Gil will be speaking at MAD//Fest x DMEXCO@home on 23-24 September.