Pyrex Leverages Its Usefulness In The Kitchen

MediaPost Publications, November 17, 2009 — Chicago-based World Kitchen brand Pyrex has launched its largest campaign in a decade to highlight the brand's new line of kitchenware. The new campaign, via the Milwaukee office of Cramer-Krasselt, carries the brand's first tag-line, "Cooking Solved." The effort includes TV, print, Internet, a new Web site and PR elements timed for the holiday cooking season.

Hershey's Arrested Development

The chocolate maker's innovation cupboard is bare. Some wonder about what might happen to the company when consumers tire of the same old standbys

BusinessWeek, October 14, 2009 — Buried within Hershey's (HSY) Web site is a section that invites consumers to pitch their own ideas for new products. "We are seeking innovative concepts," it reads. "What's your big idea?"

Hershey could certainly use the help. The innovation cupboard at the $5.1 billion chocolate maker has grown bare.

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.

Google Searches for Ways to Keep Big Ideas at Home†

Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2009 — Google Inc. is revamping how it develops and prioritizes new products, giving employees a pipeline to the company's top brass amid worries about losing its best people and promising ideas to start-ups.

The Mountain View, Calif., company famously lets its engineers spend one day a week on projects that aren't part of their jobs. But Google has lacked a formal process for senior executives to review those efforts, and some ideas have languished. Others have slipped away when employees left the company.

Six Ways to Avoid Landing in the Product Failur

Fast Company, May 29, 2009 — A decade ago the ability to generate ideas for businesses was a terrific and unique offering, and often a good business. Many companies and consultants were conducting workshops aimed at coming up with ideas, hundreds of ideas, and getting paid handsomely to do it. Today, it seems most of the businesses I deal with have more than enough ideas, it's determining the right ones to invest time and energy into that is the trick.

Fluevog's Open-Source Footwear†

Harvard Business Review, March 5, 2009 — In lean times, there's nothing more valuable than a great new product idea. Why not invite your customers to share their creativity with your company — and turn the best ideas into actual products! That's what legendary shoe designer John Fluevog has done, with a project he calls open-source footwear.

TaylorMade's Innovation Test

TaylorMade's R9 driver is the result of CEO Mark King broadening his "relentless innovation" strategy to include middle managers

BusinessWeek, February 23, 2009 — When TaylorMade Golf's R9 hits retailers in March, it will be the 45th new metal driver the company has produced since 2003. Thanks to that torrent of product introductions, the Adidas subsidiary has more than doubled its annual revenue, to $1.3 billion, catching up with once-larger rivals Callaway Golf (ELY) and Acushnet and rising to the top in sales of drivers, the game's priciest clubs.

Chief Executive Officer Mark King calls the company's lickety-split rollout schedule "relentless innovation."

P&G Looks for Beauty Tips in Genome Lab†

New Tools Help Cosmetics Makers Learn How Skin Behaves at Molecular Level, Use Findings to Improve Products

Wall Street Journal, February 17, 2009 — As scientists worked toward sequencing the human genome, many researchers embraced an exciting new tool that might offer insight into diseases. At Procter & Gamble Co., researchers saw an additional benefit: new ways to develop dandruff shampoo, skin cream and toothpaste.

Ten years ago, P&G began using genomic tools in a laboratory near its Cincinnati headquarters to learn how skin reacts at the molecular level to factors such as product ingredients or environmental changes, and to use that knowledge to improve its consumer staples and health-care products.

Is the Smell of Moroccan Bazaar Too Edgy for American Homes?†

New Products Aimed at 'Scent Seekers' Are Fast Changing the Fragrance of Clean

Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2009 — For decades, lingering whiffs of ammonia and bleach in bathrooms and kitchens signaled a freshly scrubbed home. In the 1970s and 1980s, the scent of pine forests and lemon groves gained acceptance.

Now the smell of clean has become a wildly varied bouquet: mandarin-lime detergent, disinfectant evoking "lavender vanilla and comfort," toilet-bowl cleaner in eucalyptus mint. Bleach can smell like a "fresh meadow." A new deodorizer, which hit store shelves last month, promises a "Moroccan bazaar."

The consumer-products industry has built a complex olfactory infrastructure, stretching from the laboratory to the marketer's imagination. These days, companies from Procter & Gamble Co. to Clorox Co. are tickling the human nose as never before. Researchers... continue reading

At McDonald’s, the Happiest Meal Is Hot Profits

New York Times, January 11, 2009 — It wasn’t too long ago that McDonald’s, vilified as making people fat, was written off as irrelevant. Now, six years into a rebound spawned by more appealing food and a less aggressive expansion, McDonald’s seems to have won over some of its most hardened skeptics.