Pop Artist

Meet the man with a nearly uncontainable design challenge: making Coke even bigger (and staying ahead of Pepsi).

Fast Company, October 1, 2009 — The image on the Webcam is grainy but unmistakable: a blond woman, likely in her thirties, steps up to a shiny silver soda-fountain machine at a fast-food restaurant in Atlanta and plants a fat kiss on its side. The moment is unscripted and, as far as the woman knows, unwitnessed by anyone except a girl who appears to be her daughter, busily filling her cup. If great design is all about creating a bond between your product and your customer, this is clearly some kind of mechanized Cyrano de Bergerac, brokering the ardor between a consumer and her Diet Cherry Coke.

The reason for this public display of affection? It might be the fountain's astounding array of choices, more than 100 different Coca-Cola variants, including exotic hybrids such as Minute Maid... continue reading

A Jar of Vegemite, a Window on Kraft†

Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2009 — The recipe for Vegemite, a salty brown yeast spread famous in Australia, remained unchanged for more than 80 years. Then Irene Rosenfeld became chief executive of Kraft Foods Inc.

This summer, a milder version of Vegemite appeared on store shelves across Australia. Ms. Rosenfeld had almost nothing to do with the reformulated taste, its new packaging or its rollout — which says a lot about how she has tried to transform Kraft since taking over as the food giant's CEO in 2006.

How Do Innovators Think?†

Harvard Business Review, September 28, 2009 — What makes visionary entrepreneurs such as Apple's Steve Jobs, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Ebay's Pierre Omidyar and Meg Whitman, and P&G's A.G. Lafley tick? In a question-and-answer session with HBR contributing editor Bronwyn Fryer, Professors Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of Insead explain how the "Innovators' DNA" works

Change By Design

In his new book, the CEO of design shop IDEO shows how even hospitals can transform the way they work by tapping frontline staff to engineer change

BusinessWeek, September 24, 2009 — As the center of economic activity in the developed world shifts inexorably from industrial manufacturing to knowledge creation and service delivery, innovation has become nothing less than a survival strategy. It is, moreover, no longer limited to new physical products but includes new sorts of processes, services, interactions, entertainment forms, and ways of communicating and collaborating.

No Recession at OXO

OXO's housewares have been selling well during the downturn. Now, the company is moving into office supplies and products for babies and toddlers

BusinessWeek, September 21, 2009 — OXO's kitchen and household products are winners with consumers, from its rubber-gripped potato peelers to its no-leak travel cups. The eye-catching designs have been featured in museum exhibitions and, despite premium prices, have continued selling well during the recession. OXO's parent company, Helen of Troy (HELE), reported an 11% bump in revenue from housewares in its spring quarter.

Having exhausted much of its original market, OXO is now branching out to office supplies, medical devices, and baby products.

How Starbucks lost its 'fidelity'

Exclusive book excerpt: In the trade-off between quality and convenience, the coffee juggernaut fell into the trap of becoming too familiar.

FORTUNE, September 16, 2009 — In this adaptation from his new book, Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't (Broadway Books), author Kevin Maney explains the tension between two key qualities and how a great brand got caught in a no-man's-land between them.

We constantly, in our everyday lives, make trade-offs between fidelity and convenience.

Those trade-offs, and how they affect business, help explain why Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500) hit a wall in 2007 — and why CEO Howard Schultz is still struggling to get his company's mojo back.

Zipcar - The best new idea in business

Zipcar has already persuaded young urbanites to share wheels. Now the movement is going mainstream - and players like Hertz and Ford want in.

FORTUNE, September 14, 2009 — Scott Griffith enters the parking lot outside his office in Cambridge, Mass., pulls out his iPhone, and taps a button on the screen. Suddenly a yellow Mini Cooper starts honking like a crazed goose.

Griffith approaches the vehicle and taps the screen again. The doors magically unlock, and under the steering wheel the key dangles from a cord. He starts up the car — nicknamed "Meneus" — and drives away at a rate of $11.25 an hour.

Griffith is the 50-year-old CEO of the car-sharing service Zipcar, but he's also just one of the 325,000 members who rely on the company's handy, gassed-up cars to get around

Fast Company's Most Innovative Marketing Expert Blogs, Part II

Feed Company, September 13, 2009 — Marketing has changed. We're in the age of one-to-one marketing, where the customer actually has a role in shaping the messaging for your brand. Social Media--blogs, Twitter, Facebook, wikis, user-generated tools--have given her all she needs to effect whether your products and services do well in the marketplace. Long gone are the 4Ps of marketing, these are the days of the 4Cs, a customer centric approach that includes the customer's wants and needs; the cost to satisfy the customer; the convenience; and communication.

Motorola Phone Focuses on Social Networks

The company hopes the new phone, called the Cliq, will reverse its plummeting cellphone sales

New York Times, September 11, 2009 — Motorola introduced the first of a new generation of smartphones Thursday that it hopes will reverse its plummeting cellphone sales. The phone, called the Cliq, is meant for young people obsessed with social networks. Instead of the traditional menu of features, the Cliq’s home screen is an ever-changing mosaic of e-mail, Twitter tweets and status updates, superimposed over photos of the people sending those messages.

Simply Different: A Brand Advantage

How Nintendo beat the giants using innovation

Brand Strategy Insider, September 11, 2009 — Marketing is a battle of categories. The brand is only a marker for the category itself. If you want an energy drink, you reach for a Red Bull. If you want soy milk, you buy Silk. Rental DVDs by mail? Netflix.

Creating a new category and then branding that category in such a way that your brand is perceived as the innovator and category leader (in both senses of the word) is the essence of marketing today. To create a new category, however, you have to think different, not better.