SMAU Stockholm 2026 | Interview with Gilai Nachmann, Arla Food

At SMAU Stockholm 2026 we interviewed Gilai Nachmann, Open Innovation Manager, Arla Food and we asked him what is the key step to turn a pilot project into real business and what makes easy to work with a start up: “From the industrial company perspective, for a corporate, it’s very important to find the ownership. So if we have a pilot that succeeds, who is going to take it over? Who’s going to scale it? Because our team is only responsible for leading the pilot projects. So you need to find early on, before you start finding the startup, before you start scouting them, who is going to hold this later on in the scale-up. So anchoring the ownership and organization at an early stage is very important. From the startup perspective, it is so important to understand the corporate position, the company itself, who you are talking to, and how you are solving their problems, and not stray away from your core, from what you are doing, but how you can be agile and shift and work together with them to solve the problem, and how you can co-develop and co-learn from the corporate. When they are good listeners, when they really try to understand what we are working on, how they can solve our problems, when they are good at pitching and talking through different business units, when they understand the difference between pitching to a technology specialist and pitching to a marketing or business professional, or a CFO for example, they need to have completely different pitches and address completely different problems. It’s one company, but it’s many different stakeholders and different needs, and they need to fit their story into the needs of the stakeholder they are presenting to. And that makes our life a lot easier. Also, when they are very honest and open with us about how we can succeed together, and if their requests or wishes are realistic. So not overpromising, finding the win-win between the organizations, and understanding what’s the right level of ambition for us to work together”.