Building a connected foresight ecosystem with Valona and FIBRES

Henna-Maria Kailanto leads clinical innovation work across EMEA as part of International Flavors & Fragrances Inc.’s Clinical Innovation and Translation team within the company’s Health Sciences business unit. A scientist and foresight expert by training and a PhD in food chemistry, she’s passionate about turning scientific insight into real-world health and wellbeing. As she puts it, she thrives on “discovering groundbreaking technologies” and applying “forward-thinking strategies” to long-term innovation.

In 2023, she spotted a critical opportunity: to integrate foresight across divisions and functions more seamlessly by making it collaborative, visible, and strategic. The integration between futures intelligence and market intelligence, FIBRES and Valona, became a game-changer.

“Our company had already used Valona for distributing curated insights more broadly across the organization. Integrating Valona and FIBRES has brought additional benefits. Our collaborative mapping and deeper analysis efforts have been enhanced, building shared foresight.”

HENNA-mARIA KAILANTO, Clinical Innovation Lead, IFF Health Sciences

Today, the foresight work involves pulling in data from scientific literature, RSS feeds, conference notes, market intelligence tools, and Valona itself.  “Sharing futures intelligence company-wide is critical, especially in health sciences where the time-to-market is often long. R&D teams need to think years ahead.”

Visual clarity is achieved through FIBRES foresight radars that can be distributed across functions. That visibility has helped break down silos. Teams are now working from a shared map of emerging trends and future scenarios. “People in R&D and sales, who may not have been exposed to futures thinking before, can now be part of the process. I think that has been one of the biggest wins: engagement and shared understanding.”

“Having a shared platform makes foresight more accessible.”

HENNA-mARIA KAILANTO, Clinical Innovation Lead, IFF Health Sciences

“Now, when someone attends a trade show or finds a signal in scientific literature, they know exactly where to put it. And others know where to find it,” says Henna-Maria.

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