Leading with curiosity: Ben Lyttle's vision for the pet industry

Curiosity has been a defining theme throughout Ben Lyttle's career. From helping build and grow award-winning businesses to leading strategy and innovation across the consumer goods and pet care sectors, Ben has built a reputation for challenging assumptions, asking better questions and uncovering opportunities others might miss.

With nearly two decades of experience in the pet industry, Ben has witnessed the sector's transformation from a traditional consumer category into a rapidly evolving ecosystem driven by health, technology, data and personalised care. In this Alumni Spotlight, he shares the leadership lessons that have shaped his career, explores the trends redefining the future of pet wellbeing, and explains why the most successful businesses will be those that focus not simply on products, but on delivering meaningful outcomes for pets and the people who love them.

Looking back on your career, what were some of the pivotal moments that shaped your path into senior leadership roles?

Ask better questions. Be comfortable not knowing the answer. The pivotal moments in my career seemed to be about the questions I asked. In every company I worked, I found leadership pathways because I worked hard on that skill. And the best leaders I worked with were brilliant at asking questions. So in starting BANJO, no clients, middle of the GFC, we backed ourselves and grew to more than 60 people, was named Emerging Australian Agency of the Year and was ultimately sold. We succeeded because we were great at asking questions.

A culture built on being uncomfortable in the unknown, asking questions until the answers were laid bare. That experience became a platform for how I’ve approached leadership ever since: you don’t need to know the answer at the start. It may feel smart, but it really isn’t. What’s smarter is having the confidence to sit with uncertainty, ask better questions, keep searching, and bring great people together to solve what matters.

What initially attracted you to the consumer goods and pet care sectors, and what has motivated you to stay in the industry?

Pets are where emotion, science and commerce collide. It is unusual because the customer and the ultimate beneficiary are different species, so every good idea starts with better questions: what do pet parents really value, what does the science tell us, and where can we genuinely improve an animal’s life? After around 20 years in the category, I’m still fascinated by that combination of curiosity, ideas and evidence - and by the commercial opportunity that comes from connecting them well.

The pet industry has become one of the fastest-growing consumer sectors globally. From a business perspective, what opportunities do you see driving this growth?

The pet industry is moving from a feeding economy to a pets-pan economy. The opportunity is increasingly about helping pets live more healthy years, for longer, through better nutrition, functional health, diagnostics, data and care - not simply selling more food. I believe the businesses that win will own a meaningful part of that health journey, not simply a place on the shelf. This is being seen in recent M+A activity globally.

How do you evaluate new opportunities and decide where to invest time, resources, and innovation?

Tension. Advantage. Result. I started The Result to help companies create and realise better outcomes, first in Australia and now in the United States. Our approach is to answer three questions.

• Tension: what are others missing? Where is the contradiction, unexpected insight or whitespace that reveals a better opportunity?
• Advantage: what can this business genuinely own? The best ideas are often not what consumers ask for, but the ones that make the outcome they want feel obvious. And they become a moat, without it the advantage may be fleeting.
• Result: can we make money? Can we prove desirability, create demand at scale and commercialise profitably? For me, that is how you decide where to invest: find the tension, build an advantage around it, and turn it into a result that matters.

What trends are currently shaping the future of pet food or pet accessories, and which do you believe will have the greatest long-term impact?

Evidence beats adjectives. I've often said you can copy colours but you can’t copy claims - and this is proving more true as we look forward. Fresh nutrition, functional benefits, supplements, diagnostics and personalisation are all important, but the bigger shift is from claiming to be “premium”, “natural” or “healthy” to proving meaningful benefit. I think the next generation of category leaders will compete increasingly on evidence, not just positioning. Consumers no longer buy ingredients, they are buying outcomes. That is the future for nutrition, wellbeing and lifestyle.

Sustainability is becoming an increasingly important consideration across all industries. What role should the pet food sector play in building a more sustainable future?

Pursue it, measure it, and be diligent in how you market it. The pet sector should keep reducing impact across ingredients, sourcing, manufacturing, packaging and logistics, while building greater traceability and transparency through the supply chain. Sustainability ambition matters, but so does measuring the real trade-offs and being precise, evidence-based and transparent in the claims we make. It’s expected. Few brands have made it a differentiator.

What responsibilities do pet industry leaders have when it comes to animal welfare, ethical sourcing, and consumer transparency?

Our companions come before the claim, always. In a category where regulation and standards can vary by market, pet welfare has to be the non-negotiable: safety and quality must be a mantra lived every day, not a compliance exercise. That means rigorous sourcing and traceability, testing and quality controls, transparent labelling, responsible formulation, and health claims supported by credible evidence. The best businesses don’t wait for regulation to tell them what “good” looks like — they set a higher standard themselves.

For alumni who are passionate about animals but also interested in business and innovation, what opportunities do you see emerging in the sector?

The biggest opportunities are emerging at the intersections. Science and consumer insight, nutrition and data, health and technology, sustainability and commercialisation are increasingly converging. And I don’t just mean food science: opportunities are emerging across diagnostics, genomics, microbiome science, behaviour, longevity, wearables, imaging and large-scale health data, with AI helping turn all of that into earlier detection, better decisions and more personalised care. The most valuable people will be those who can connect science + technology + consumer understanding + commercialisation. That is where I think many of the category’s most important new businesses will be built.

Ben Lyttle is currently the Chair, RPFCo Fresh (Labs) and the Co-President and Founding Partner of The Result.

He completed a Bachelor of Business (Honours)

Have a question for Ben? Connect with him on LinkedIn.