Pepsi has teamed up with VC firm Highland Capital Partners and Mashable to make sure it gets in on the ground floor of the next Foursquare.

Not literally Foursquare, but the Next Big Thing. Called PepsiCo10, the effort involves an "innovation-incubator program," with which PepsiCo hopes to identify as many as 10 promising entrepreneurial groups, assign them an industry mentor, and attach them to pilot programs with various PepsiCo brands. 

"Within the CPG world one of the challenges we face is how to deeply connect and engage with consumers in the new landscape," Seth Kaufman, director-media strategy and investment at PepsiCo, tells Ad Age. "And this is an opportunity for us to invest in the future and encourage young entrepreneurs coming up with great platforms." He added that the demographic using -- and increasingly developing -- this technology is Millennials, the company's target market for major brands like Pepsi and SoBe Life Water.

Thoughts: This is crowdsourcing in a way, but I wonder if PepsiCo10 will set up a site to gather ideas from the around the web, ala its community service initiative Pepsi Refresh Project.

Second, they could do worse than checking out a new book on bringing innovation to bear for brands, here.

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