Innovate NXT: flavor-first AI R&D for food and flavor teams

Move faster and reach the right flavor decision.

Innovate NXT is BCD iLabs' flavor-first, AI-powered R&D platform for food and flavor teams. It brings relevant context, predictions, and retained learning into expert-owned workflows so teams can focus options and make better-informed development decisions. Flavor-first does not mean flavor-only: regulatory requirements, product and label claims, nutrition, ingredients, cost, processing, manufacturing, quality, and commercial needs remain connected to the complete product decision. Customer regulatory, legal, quality, and review processes remain responsible for approval.

For flavor houses The work begins with a customer brief. Innovate NXT helps teams capture the application, target profile, regional context, requirements, and commercial need; develop and compare flavor-formula directions; evaluate application performance and intended usage range; focus sample selection; and retain brief-to-response learning. Flavorists, application scientists, sensory teams, and commercial teams continue to test, refine, review, and choose the customer-ready response.

Pilot opportunity: bring one customer brief where formulation, application performance, usage range, sample selection, or response quality is slowing the team.

For food CPG companies The work begins with a product opportunity, innovation brief, or renovation need. Innovate NXT helps teams set the intended eating experience alongside claims, nutrition, ingredients, cost, processing, manufacturing, quality, and commercial requirements; compare prototype and application results; evaluate sensory and technical tradeoffs; and retain the decision context for the next iteration. Product developers, sensory experts, regulatory, quality, operations, commercial teams, and flavor partners remain responsible for testing and approval.

Pilot opportunity: bring one innovation or renovation where flavor must survive tradeoffs across claims, nutrition, cost, ingredients, processing, or manufacturing.

Why partner

• Embedded decision support inside expert-owned R&D workflows
• Customer-specific context and retained learning
• Expert authority over development, testing, review, and approval
• Customer formulas remain customer IP and are not used as shared-model training data
• A scoped pilot can establish objectives, workflow fit, data needs, evaluation methods, and success criteria before broader deployment

We are seeking pilot or trial and co-development partners for one clearly bounded flavor-house or food CPG workflow.