Diageo has closed down its breakthrough innovation department as part of its far-reaching global restructure, The Grocer has learned.
The Diageo Breakthrough Innovation team was established in 2024 as a subsidiary within Diageo’s global innovation function.
The team was headed up by global breakthrough innovation director Guy Middleton with the stated aim to “shape innovation at Diageo beyond the development of new products”.
Projects pioneered by the Breakthrough Innovation team included: Project Halo, an AI-powered bottle personalisation tool, What’s Your Whisky, an AI-powered whisky discovery tool, Everpour, a bespoke circular keg and dispense system for the on-trade, and Fusion By Diageo, an accelerator programme for scaling technology companies.
However, as part of wider changes to Diageo’s new operating model, unveiled by CEO Dave Lewis earlier this year, responsibility for non-product NPD will now once again sit within Diageo’s local and category-specific innovation departments.
Some Breakthrough platforms, including Everpour, will be retained as part of Diageo’s forward-looking innovation strategy, The Grocer understands.
Meanwhile, following the change, Middleton has been redeployed by Diageo and will now head up innovation for whisky and luxury products globally.
The move is understood to have resulted in some redundancies at Diageo, though the Smirnoff brand owner declined to comment when approached by The Grocer.
At its Capital Markets Day, Diageo outlined plans to cut $1bn in costs over the next three years, following another year of sliding sales.
A new streamlined operating model – which Diageo said would be in place in 90% of its markets by the end of last month – will seek to reduce overheads from over 14% to 10.5% of net sales over two years.
Lewis has consistently refused to put a number on the number of jobs Diageo would shed to meet its cost-saving target.
However, the maker of Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker and Captain Morgan had an average of 27,938 full-time employees in the year to June, down 6.4% from the 29,860 workers it had a year ago, its latest annual report, published in August, showed.
Severance costs at Diageo in the year to 30 June 2026 totalled $514m, according to the company’s full-year results.
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