Creating and sharing value – Story 1 Driving digital innovation in Fragrances

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the relationship between people and technology. The future of fragrance creation is being redefined by our perfumers using the very latest of technologies. Givaudan perfumer Calice Becker explains.

Calice Becker, Vice President Perfumer and Director of the Givaudan Perfumery School, sees the potential of digital disruption. AI promises machines that can sense, comprehend and learn. It is not just about new and ever-more clever technology, but also about enhancing human ingenuity and creativity with speed and precision.

“At Givaudan we grasp the opportunities offered by disruptive digital innovation to develop tools to redefine the rules of fragrance creation,” says Calice. “We are aware of the potential of a fully AI-powered tool for perfume creation, and the launch of ‘Carto’ in April 2019 is a first decisive step on this path. Our brand new digital tool redefines the rules of fragrance creation.”

“I have been part of this exciting project since the beginning and was able to help shape a tool that contributes to the future of perfumery.” ‘Carto’ offers true complementary support to the work of the perfumer, allowing them to imagine and explore new palette combinations in a different way. The tool broadens the field of olfactive references far beyond the capacity of a perfumer’s memory. “We perfumers can now focus on creation as we have a tool that brings to life our ideas, inspirations and creative concepts.”

‘Carto’ is an intuitive, interactive system using a playful visual approach. Perfumers use a wide touchscreen to visually create their formulas and at a speed that simply did not exist before. “It’s fun to play with the tool,” says Calice. “It gives us a bubble of pure creativity and frees us to focus on inspiring new olfactive signatures. The instant-sampling robot enables seamless and speedy production of fragrance trials, which increases the rate of our creations.

“What I find particularly exciting about ‘Carto’ is around the harmonisation of perfume ingredients, which I define as the most efficient way of putting ingredients together. Nature is extremely efficient; a flower does not spend energy on developing a scent that

The Digital Factory is our new platform enabling us to broaden the creative space of our flavourists and perfumers. It is an environment favourable to reinventing ways to create, develop and make better flavours and fragrances that delight consumers worldwide.

Experimenting is key in digital, which means we need an environment where we can test and learn, perhaps fail before moving onto the next idea, or reshape the one we initially had. For this we need additional speed, an experimentation approach. This is why we opened our first Digital Factory, a location to accelerate our projects through a different what and how. Located in the heart of Paris next to Station F, the biggest start-up campus in the world

Inaugurated in January 2019

“The Digital Factory is a place to inspire, ideate and accelerate initiatives in an environment that stimulates a mindset of innovation and which encourages thinking beyond current ways of working,” said Fabien Jaunault, Head of Information Management and Technology.

3-hour discovery workshops 65 Fully staffed 100%

People trained 150

3-day design sprints 14

Customer workshops 15

3-month project accelerations 6

will not be smelt. ‘Carto’ is good in looking for efficiency of ingredients and this to me is a powerful attraction. It means we can do more, yet with fewer trials and fewer ingredients.”

‘Carto’ is a creative design aid that is already opening so many doors for us. We’ve had several wins with our perfumers using the tool, including ‘She Was An Anomaly’ from the French niche fragrance brand Etat Libre d’Orange; our perfumer in this creation was Daniela Andrier.

Going forward, our aim is to also leverage consumer insights to provide additional data to our perfumers to help them refine their creative accords. ‘Carto’ is currently deployed at our fragrance creative centres in all regions where perfumers are experimenting with the system by integrating it as part of their creation process. It is also at our Digital Factory as part of the Computer Aided Creation programme. As co-innovation was an important element in creating ‘Carto’ – we had cross-functional teams from perfumers to IT experts as well as experts from academia – what better place to deploy it. The Digital Factory brings together experts, partners, customers, start-ups and internal teams from all over the world in an innovation ecosystem.

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