As the explosion of social transforms innovation and R&D, senior managers are pressured to be technologists, crafting business strategy to meet competitive challenges, the executive said during a panel, ?Technology Blurs the Lines.? The session reflected how mobile is expected to be a catalyst in innovation worldwide as brands increasingly have global supply chains. 

?It is this incredible consumer engagement practice that has now sprung up,? said David Bernard, global innovation leader for PepsiCo, Purchase, NY.  ?Now we start to think about open innovation on multiple levels as we start engaging across our product-development practices.? 

PepsiCo, a global food and beverage leader with $65 billion in revenue and more than 22 billion-dollar brands including Frito-Lay, Tropicana, and Gatorade, regularly ranks among the top innovative companies.

It believes that for brands today the key to moving products is the backstory behind the product and understanding the culture around consumers who want to buy your product.

That is why it frequently collaborates with myriad partners in the media and entertainment world to provide relevant content to consumers.

For instance, PepsiCo?s music-centered partnership with Twitter drove sales and user engagement, in online and offline transactions.

PepsiCo also partnered with Mashable to launch a competition that looked to match startups in social media, communications, technology and mobile marketing with industry mentors and PepsiCo brands. 

In another example, PepsiCo?s ?Break To Reset? contest asked for new snack ideas to help working adults have a break, clear their mind, refuel, regain a positive attitude and get on with their day. 

Its ?Munching Partner? contest aimed to gather new ideas for snacks to help working men and women get through long working hours. 

The Forrester forum session also included Stacey Vollman Warwick, head of content and social media marketing for JP Morgan Chase, and Maggie Chan Jones, CMO, SAP. The moderator was David Kirkpatrick, founder-CEO of Techonomy.

While PepsiCo is primarily a physical-products company, it changed the way it interacted with customers via an interactive social vending machine. Customers could buy products, collect loyalty points, and even send gifts by e-mail or their social-media profiles, while PepsiCo gathered data about their locations and connections.

PepsiCo, which frequently turned to crowdsourcing platforms to drive what it calls open innovation, draws on more than 50 global academic relationships within its product-development group. 

?And those are open engagements with academic institutions to help us create a better product,? Mr. Bernard said.

?We?re opening the doors on how we innovate,? he said. ?It used to be we?d have our own labs, and now we?re just opening up innovation with all layers of the ecosystem.?