He’s an innovator because…as founder of Stonyfield Farms, he has grown the company into the third largest yogurt producer in the country, using an innovative process and taking risks with ingredients like inulin that are totally unfamiliar to mainstream audience.

The Background:

Gary Hirshberg has been president and CEO of Stonyfield Farm, Londonderry, NH, since a few months after its founding in 1983. He has overseen the company’s growth from infancy to its current $60 million annual sales level, with distribution in all 50 states. Stonyfield has a three-part bottom line that reflects a social, environmental and financial mission.

Gary is on the board of Leadership NH, The Derryfield School and the Social Venture Network. He is founding Chairman of O’ Natural’s, a new natural fast foods enterprise and the founder of the Social Venture Institute, a “boot camp” for social minded entrepreneurs. He won the 1999 Global Green USA’s Green Cross Millennium Award—inspired by Mikhail Gorbachev—for enlisting business leaders to join him in taking action to stem climate change and he and Stonyfield have won two of the nation’s top environmental honors from the President’s Council on Sustainable Development and national environmental nonprofit Renew America, the National Award for Sustainability in the category of Climate Change and the Robert Rodale Environmental Achievement Award.

Words of Wisdom:

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced thus far?

“For the first eight or nine years, the challenge was convincing two kinds of people—supermarket customers and investors—that we were credible. We had no real supermarket experience, no food experience, just a strong instinct about where preferences were headed and a hypothesis that if we packed a product full of nutrition, health and environmental messages, it would sell.”

What should be the measure of success in our industry?

“There are two answers for how to measure success. The industry answer is we don’t mind being measured by conventional measures such as shelf space, turns and IRI data. This is syndicated data and a valid measure of success.

“The consumer answer is a little more complicated. My sense is that part of what’s happening here is that as people take greater responsibility for their health, we’re seeing a lot of good and exciting products but also a lot of garbage and ‘fad’ type products. The next measure of success is staying power in the market, which really gets down to credibility. This is an important index for us.”

Where would you like to see your company/your work/your industry in five years?

“Five years from now, we’ll be 100% organic. In addition, we’ll also have added inulin to our entire line for a truly synbiotic product. Although it is a more expensive ingredient and there are more challenges in terms of processing, the trend is going that way and people are understanding the message, particularly around increased calcium absorption. We will be closing in on 8-10% marketshare in the U.S., although the market will be a lot more crowded. I believe there is a revolution taking place right now, concurrent with changes on the healthcare side, with wellness and preventive awareness growing. Insurance companies are starting to realize that mind/body and mind/food connections are where the economics are and five years from now that will be more solidly established.”

Are we making a difference?

“There is no question that we are making a difference. My personal yardstick for success is watching the ‘big guys’ come into the market. When we set out with our five cows nearly 20 years ago, we were quite arrogant and assumed that one day the world would come to our door and make the connection between food and the environment and the planet and it’s nice to see this vindicated to some degree. Although throughout the years we have seen some ‘lowest common denominator’ thinking, we can see our legacy and believe we are leaving a better planet for our own little yogurt eaters.”

If you could change one thing, on an industry-wide scale, that would open up new opportunities for all industry, what would it be?

“I would expedite the demand for organics, which would make the costs come down to parity with conventional foods. I think that many of us are so zealous about organics and make sweeping assumptions about why consumers want the stuff, hoping the link between food and planet is why they buy organic. I actually think it’s about food safety and keeping the ‘yucky’ stuff out of our body. We have done a lot of talking about the environment and maybe if we were more commercially sensitive to what the consumer responds to, the segment would be farther along.”