Making Up the Future with Kellogg’s Former “Willy Wonka”, Nigel Hughes
“Look at massively successful companies. What do they do? They’re not there battling over some past that vanished 20, 30, 40 years ago. They’re creating futures. There’s always much more opportunity there.”
Watch former Kellogg SVP for Innovation and Research Nigel Hughes on The Point Cloud, Agerpoint’s interview series featuring leaders at the intersection of climate, agriculture, nature, and technology.
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Nigel Hughes remembers getting a haircut years ago when someone asked what he did for a living. After hearing his complex explanation, the person offered a simpler take: "Oh, so you're the Willy Wonka of Kellogg."
As former SVP of Innovation and Research at Kellogg, Hughes led a team dedicated to "creating the future of food." But unlike the fictional chocolatier, Hughes's innovations weren't pure imagination – they were about solving real challenges.
On #ThePointCloud, Agerpoint's interview series featuring leaders at the intersection of climate, agriculture, nature, and technology, Hughes brings 35 years of food industry experience to a wide-ranging discussion of how we can change things for the better.
Hughes says a food system "squarely in the middle" of the climate crisis must also transform its overall purpose.
"We created a food system during the 20th century which was about getting as many calories out of the food system as we could, so that no one would be undernourished" Hughes explains. "Now we need to transform that food system to a food system where we give maximal nutritional benefit for minimal calorific intake - or at least optimized calorific intake."
Democratizing Agricultural Data
Hughes champions “technologies that allow us to bring data collection right down to the farm and into the farmer's hands." He emphasizes the importance of real-world data over laboratory precision: "There are many people growing many things in many conditions on many farms. But if we're going to make progress with that, we've got to allow them to be part of the solution. Allow them to be leading what we should be measuring and how we should be measuring it."
Hughes warns against the human tendency to seek absolute precision at the expense of accuracy. "We love to think that something is absolute and we love to think that we're on the right side of that absolute," he notes. "What then tends to happen is you get absolute concentration around a completely inaccurate, but an extraordinarily precise answer. And that's extremely dangerous."
Innovating Futures
Both established companies and startups face innovation challenges, says Hughes. Startups can be limited by "excitement about a particular solution," while established companies are "built for efficiency" rather than innovation.
For Hughes, success isn't about competing in the present – it's about “finding the big spaces for the future."
"Look at massively successful companies. What do they do? They're not there battling over some past that vanished 20, 30, 40 years ago. They're creating futures."
This creative freedom is energizing. "One of the things I used to say to folks is, I love my job because I can never be wrong. I'm making up the future. Who's going to tell me I'm wrong? Nobody can tell me I'm wrong because I'm making it up. And there's an enormous power in that."
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