Abstract: The savory snack market in Hungary and Central Europe is already highly matured. To gain higher market share in existing market segment or have new market segment is highly challenging and expensive. The companies must be innovating on new attractive products to the consumers. This case study explains the business situation when an FMCG company implement a new food product to new market by using new manufacturing technology. This business situation was described in Ochs 3-dimensional matrix as “self-murder corner”. Considered the project complexity and the all 3 dimensions are new — even the careful planning — cannot be foreseen all risks and issue before the project. Consequently, in the different phases of the project timeline the company faced multiplied issue. This study is intending to explain the ways what can be applied as adaptive change management to recognize and eliminate the risks from phase 0 until the products are already in the market.  Adaptive change management is a way of working of teams who can adapt all complex and cross functional decisions even on their structure rather than application of pre-defined scenarios and response problems. The study describes the project teams as “small companies”. The result of the project proved that this difficult situation could be successfully solved if the organization is open enough to learn ongoing, the teams are cross-functional, strong, and authorized to decide in time. Additionally, the complexity of the project can be a “masterpiece” base for the entire organization learning curve.

Key words: change management; technology; product; FMCG; Ochs matrix; learning

JEL codes: M210