Nutrition & Santé: a one-day sprint leaves no room for divergence — it has to be prepared before the room opens

Context

Nutrition & Santé: a one-day sprint leaves no room for divergence — it has to be prepared before the room opens

The context is documented. Nutrition & Santé, based in Revel, is a European player in health and dietetic foods, owned since 2009 by the Japanese pharmaceutical group Otsuka. Its portfolio brings together Gerblé, Gerlinéa, Milical, Céréal Bio, SOY, Bicentury and Isostar, with subsidiaries in France, Spain, Italy and Benelux and distribution in more than fifteen countries. Gerblé grew by around 7% in 2025, and Isostar benefits from the growth of sport participation and active nutrition.

The decisive constraint on this engagement is not the subject but the format. One day does not allow you to open a search space and then close it: divergence has to be prepared upstream, as pillars settled before the room opens, and the exercises have to be written for this precise subject. The pillars retained, the concepts produced and the client's proprietary data are not disclosed.

A long-standing health food player: Nutrition & Santé holds a particular position: neither quite a food manufacturer nor a pharmaceutical laboratory, but a set of specialist brands — Gerblé, Gerlinéa, Milical, Céréal Bio, SOY, Bicentury, Isostar — organised around health and dietetic foods.

The group has been owned since 2009 by Otsuka Pharmaceutical, and operates in France, Spain, Italy and Benelux with distribution in more than fifteen countries. Gerblé recorded growth of around 7% in 2025.

A category whose boundaries are moving: Active nutrition has no settled definition. It covers sports nutrition in the strict sense, but also everyday energy, recovery, mobility and the maintenance of performance among people who do not consider themselves athletes.

A regulatory frame that limits what can be said: In Europe, what a food product may claim about health or nutrition is tightly regulated. That constraint does not arrive at the end of the process: it determines from the ideation stage which routes can reach market.

One day, therefore preparation: The likely challenge was to produce, in a single day, concepts developed enough to be carried forward. That format rules out the usual sequence — explore widely, then narrow — because there is no time to close what has been opened.

The methodological consequence is direct: most of the work happens before the session. The innovation pillars are settled upstream, and the day is spent producing inside those pillars rather than searching for them.

Pillars rather than a theme: An innovation pillar is not a theme but a growth hypothesis, stated precisely enough to direct and openly enough not to dictate the answer. 'Recovery' is a theme; 'making recovery perceptible to someone who does not think of themselves as an athlete' is a pillar.

Exercises written for this subject: Generic ideation exercises produce generic ideas. On a subject where regulation, physiology and usage all intervene at once, the exercises have to carry those three dimensions in their wording.

Innovating inside what can be said: An idea whose benefit cannot be expressed within the permitted claims will not be marketable as such. Building that constraint into the ideation rather than after it avoids producing a list of which half is unusable.

Separating category growth from brand extension: The brief pairs the two, but they commit neither the same means nor the same risks. Growing a usage is not the same thing as taking an existing brand onto new ground.

The sprint was framed around questions of this kind:

Active nutrition has stopped being a shelf and become a state of mind. A category with no stable boundary is fertile ground for innovation and difficult ground to frame.

Strategic challenge

The questions that structured the work

Research and work conducted

What the engagement covered

• The last question determines the design of the sprint. A day is built from what has to exist at its close, not from what one would like to explore within it.
• The approach applied rests on one principle: in a short format, the quality of the outcome is decided in the preparation.
• The one-day format: There is no time to open and then close. Any unprepared exploration consumes the day without producing an output.
• A category with moving boundaries: Active nutrition covers very different practices. Without framing, the group spends the day defining the subject.
• The claims frame: What may be asserted about a health or nutrition benefit is tightly regulated and determines feasibility from the idea stage.
• The boundary with medicine: A group backed by a pharmaceutical shareholder has to hold a clear boundary between food and treatment, in language as in formulation.
• A portfolio of uneven legitimacy: Not every brand can carry the same propositions. A misplaced extension weakens the brand more than it opens a market.
• The gap between idea and concept: A workshop easily produces ideas. What is most often missing is the step to a stated concept, which alone allows the work to continue.

Deliverables

Objects teams can use beyond the engagement

• Strategic innovation pillars stated ahead of the session.
• Ideation exercises written specifically for the active nutrition subject.
• Concepts carrying a stated benefit, a usage moment and a reason to believe.
• An explicit separation between category growth routes and brand extension routes.
• A feasibility filter incorporating the claims frame.
• A ranking of concepts by speed of implementation.

Key learnings

What this case makes clear

• In a one-day sprint, divergence is prepared before the room opens.
• An innovation pillar is not a theme: it is a growth hypothesis precise enough to direct and open enough not to dictate the answer.
• A generic ideation exercise produces generic ideas.
• The regulatory constraint is a design parameter, not a filter applied afterwards.
• Category growth and brand extension commit neither the same means nor the same risks.
• An idea becomes a concept when it carries a benefit, a usage moment and a reason to believe.

For comparable organisations

Where this approach is useful

This case will speak to organisations showing at least one of the following characteristics: Tightly constrained workshop time and high expectations of output. An emerging category whose boundaries are not settled. A regulatory frame determining what a product may claim. A portfolio whose brands do not share the same legitimacy on new ground. Workshops that produce ideas but few sequels. Confusion between growing a usage and extending a brand. These situations recur in nutrition, consumer health, cosmetics, food supplements and every sector where product claims are regulated.