Adam Maxwell outlines his approach to food innovation, and it's about to get talent-driven

"I think philosophically: do it for the world, don’t be short-term or long-term selfish." In the latest You've Got This interview with Founder and CEO at Voyage Foods?Adam Maxwell , he shares how his experiences in fine dining shaped his approach towards food science, addressing systemic problems with an eye towards the future, and the importance of a pragmatic and selfless approach to innovation. Don't miss his answers below, along with announcing our next guest, talent development leader and author Stacey Young Rivers, Ph.D. .

Victoria: "Can you share with us your approach to building your career? Why did you decide to specialize in food science?"

Adam: "I’ve been in love with food ever since I was a young kid. In fact, my most prized gift from my Bar Mitzvah was a KitchenAid.

"I think I gravitated towards food at such an early age because to me, it’s one of the most profound art forms. The food we eat becomes the cells in our bodies. No matter what religion, background, or faith you are, all our important and most celebrated moments have food and beverage at the center."

I started working in professional restaurants at just 14 years-old, continuing throughout high school and beyond. As I worked in high end restaurants, I realized feeding 20-60 people a transcendent meal once a day didn’t align with my priorities. I wanted to create small yet meaningful touchpoints and impact as many people as possible. Feeling inspired, I studied food chemistry at McGill University. From there, I worked in food R&D for some of the biggest food companies in the world, and I eventually landed at Endless West, the world's first and only molecular wine and spirits company. It was wine without grapes, whiskey without barrel aging? — it was all very magical and very beautiful, but I didn’t want to work in wine and spirits my whole life. So, I started to think about what was next — and that was Voyage Foods."

Victoria: "What inspired you to start Voyage Foods?"

Adam: "I was working in the Bay Area in food tech, on the research, development, and manufacturing side. I saw how the industry was looking at 'nice to have things,' but when taking a closer look at coffee or chocolate, there simply won’t be enough over time. In fact, the previous White House chef, Sam Kass, recently discussed how there won’t be enough coffee in 20-30 years for the globe to keep consuming it at the level we are now. It’s the same situation for chocolate. And as for peanuts, when we started to uncover these at-risk, beloved foods, we came across other categories with barriers, like allergies, that affected a mass amount of the population.

There are a million different plant-based chicken nugget companies. This is still an important sector — the world can’t continue the per-capita meat-centric diet, which is being exported around the world over the last few decades — but it isn’t sustainable globally. So when starting the company, my thought was, 'How do we replace the commodities that are about to become extinct or are wildly inaccessible? How do we make them lower-cost with lower environmental impact, for everyone to enjoy?' I did not set out to start a molecular chocolate, peanut butter, or coffee company. The real impetus for starting Voyage Foods was to solve systemic problems that persist in our food system in a manner that is cost-effective, sustainable, and meant to be enjoyed by everyone."

Victoria: "How do you approach innovation in a space that’s been established for hundreds, if not thousands, of years?"

Adam: "Objectively speaking, food is the oldest industry in the world. In the most fundamental ways, civilization was made possible by the domestication of plant and animal species. People talk about food technology like it’s new, but it really isn’t. Nicolas Appert invented canning for the Napoleonic wars in order to transport food safely. Biscotti was developed as the first low-moisture food for the Roman legions. So the concept of food innovation, technology and science isn’t new, we’re just evolving it.?

The Voyage Foods approach to food science and development is different, rooted in research innovation. Kelsey Tenney, our VP of research and development, and I spent an afternoon brainstorming how we could future-proof our favorite foods, deciding to focus on chocolate first, which we’re launching B2B next year. We knew some of the biggest companies in the world are developing cocoa-free chocolate, and so if large companies are dedicating ample resources into conventional paths and haven't seen any progress, what could we try that is non-conventional??

Our innovation platform is centered around taking different ingredients and transforming them into delicious, value-added goods that we all know and love. If you look at a chocolate bar, a cacao seed that goes into it actually tastes nothing like it. In the plant-based space, you’re often extracting plants into all of their separate components, which is cost-and energy-intensive. You’re isolating them, purifying them, and then putting them back together to make a food product. It never seemed linear to us. So we decided to take real food and transform it into what we set out on making. To us, that is answered by research as opposed to innovation."?

Victoria: "What advice would you have for fellow founders and entrepreneurs who are tackling unique challenges?"

Adam: "At the most fundamental level, here are two pieces of advice I would put on billboards all over the Bay Area:

• “Capital Pragmatism.” There’s a tremendous responsibility to be the steward of other people’s capital. A lot of venture funds are funded by pension funds, which means you’re playing with people’s retirement money. There’s a huge amount of weight to that. I’m sitting on a used chair we got from another startup that went out of business. We want to put our capital and our time into important business objectives.
• ?“Do It For Infinity.” To paraphrase our vision statement, we’re doing it for the world and the infinite game. Look at where you want your company to be in ten years, twenty years, and thirty years from now. That infinite mentality of what you can do over a very long period of time is much more powerful than looking at an IPO or sales figures in four years.?

When put in practice, you’ll use your resources differently and build a much more sustainable business. While there are a lot of self-serving companies out there, the fun side of running a business is making an important impact. My favorite magazine cover was an MIT Technology Review cover, which said, 'They promised us a moon base, we got Facebook.' Voyage Foods is in some ways named after explorers and in other ways, the Space program, dreaming of the future and what could be. In the era of the Voyager Space Program, we thought we’d have clean, plentiful food, we’d cure world hunger, we’d have flying cars… instead we have smart people working on Snapchat filters. So I think philosophically: do it for the world, don’t be short-term or long-term selfish."

Follow Adam on LinkedIn.

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Our next guest: Stacey Young Rivers, Ph.D.

If you're interested in learning more about growing your skills and developing your career, you'll want to follow our next guest, author and talent development professional Stacey Young Rivers, Ph.D. . As Senior Director of People Growth + Enterprise Skills Strategy at Warner Bros. Discovery , she leads a team focused on global curriculum development, team framework, and courses. With that in mind, here's what I'll be asking Dr. Young Rivers:

• How did you discover your passion for learning and career development?
• You're a blogger, have authored three books, and also write a LinkedIn Newsletter entitled "Level Up on Learning." How do you incorporate your dedication to writing in your day-to-day?
• In today's fast-changing professional landscape, what advice would you have for those who may be impacted by layoffs or who may be looking to navigate the next best step in their work journey?

Have a career or skills-development question of your own? I encourage you to ask Dr. Young Rivers in the comments below, and am grateful for you being a part of You've Got This!