Navistar to unveil luxury heavy-duty truck

Crain's Chicago Business, February 7, 2008 — Navistar International Corp. will begin offering a new heavy-duty truck aimed at the high end of the market where the company has struggled to sell trucks in the past.

The Warrenville-based company’s will unveil its new LoneStar model today at the Chicago Auto Show at McCormick Place.

The big highway tractor attempts to combine daring exterior styling and lots of interior comforts with the Navistar’s latest performance innovations, such as better fuel mileage and improved suspension.

Seemed Like a Good Idea Inc.†

Wall Street Journal, February 6, 2008 — Blue french fries. A colorless soda that tastes funny. A frozen soup-and-sandwich convenience food that turned out to be inconveniently labor intensive.

These products not only failed in the marketplace, but did so predictably, at least in the eyes of Calvin L. Hodock, a marketing guru whose "Why Smart Companies Do Dumb Things" is all about the many ways that innovation can go wrong. Mr. Hodock knows a thing or two about the subject, and his book offers considerable wisdom, some of it conventional and some of it not. Despite having a wooden writing style and a propensity for stating the obvious, he raises a handful of matters worth thinking about.

Refilling Kraft's Cookie Jar

CEO Irene Rosenfeld is banking on a raft of new products to boost sales. Can she whip them up before investors lose patience?

BusinessWeek, December 13, 2007 — Oh, the lunchtime dilemma. That turkey-on-whole-wheat sandwich you brown-bagged from home is properly frugal but so boring. That takeout panini with rosemary chicken, sun-dried tomato, and aioli, on the other hand, is tasty but sure takes a bite out of the paycheck. The chefs at Kraft Foods (KFT) think they've found a middle option: Oscar Mayer Deli Creations. The $2.99 kits, rolled out in grocery stores in August, have the makings of a hot meat-and-cheese sandwich, with bread that even gets toasty in the microwave.

How Marketing Can Lead the Charge for Business Innovation

Marketing Profs, November 6, 2007 — It's surprising how many business professionals don't really know what marketing is. Some people perceive it to be a necessary evil that consumes budgets and provides little payback; others see it as a person or department tasked with producing tactical "creative things" such as advertising, Web sites, email campaigns, and so on.

If we can take one idea away from all of these definitions, it would be that Marketing's job is to create customer value, engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty. Marketing serves as the stand-in for the customer, informing product development and other functions of what customers want and need.

Where Designers Rule

Electronics maker Bang & Olufsen doesn't ask shoppers what they want. Its faith is in its design gurus

BusinessWeek, November 5, 2007 — Torsten Valeur, one of Bang & Olufsen's top designers, sits in a windowless room in Gumi, South Korea, staring dumbfounded at a group of Samsung Electronics engineers and thinks, "Oh, s---." Valeur is designing a new high-end cell phone for B&O, the Danish company known for its cutting-edge consumer electronics, and Samsung, a partner providing mobile-phone technology. Valeur, here for a routine three-day product-update meeting, has just received terrible news. Without telling him, the Samsung engineers changed the screen on his phone from 2.1 inches to 2 in. Why? Because 2-in. screens are standard, and that's what is in stock. Worse, they've gone ahead and ordered thousands

A Recipe for Creating New Products†

Take two completely separate categories. Combine

Wall Street Journal, October 27, 2007 — When it comes to brand extension, the conventional wisdom is simple: Don't overextend. The idea is that companies should stay within established product lines to avoid dilution of the brand identity. After all, it makes intuitive sense not to diversify into categories that are remote to core products.

To rejuvenate established product families, brand managers thus typically combine features of one product with those of others in the same family. Think of a cellphone-cum-organizer-cum-computer-etc

The problem with the don't-overextend mind-set is that managers can easily fall into the trap of inbreeding: They overwhelm customers with additional features taken from related product lines.

Spicing Up the Gum Trade

The Wrigley Global Innovation Center is changing the way the venerable candy maker creates products. How a sleek new chew came to be.

Fast Company, October 1, 2007 — On Goose Island, an industrial district in downtown Chicago, clipboard-carrying chemists are filling vials, testing formulas, and calibrating state-of-the-art spectrometers in the laboratories of an ultramodern research facility.

Want New Products That Get Noticed? Change the Process†

Bad Call: Results From a New Survey Show Marketers Are Reluctant to Financially Invest in True Innovation

Advertising Age, October 1, 2007 — The media are always looking for new "darlings," and every now and then a sensational new product emerges, whipping them into a frenetic state. Swiffer, the iPod, TiVo, Crest Whitestrips, Red Bull — all are products that had the industry gushing about their features and benefits. Part of what drives these stories is the fact that there are so few wildly successful new products — especially in comparison with the number of products launched.

Gatorade Takes a Gamble With Its Heritage by Heading Off Field†

While a Light Version Fizzled in 1990, Beverage Giant Has Learned Its Lessons Since Then (Think Propel)

Advertising Age, July 30, 2007 — PepsiCo's Gatorade owns a commanding 80%-plus market share of the $4 billion sports-drink category it created in 1967. But that also works against it, as its immense market share allows for little in-category growth. And with its sales recently lagging, Gatorade has little choice but to grow through new products — and new reasons to drink them.

Wrigley bets on the box for new brand

Crain's Chicago Business, July 29, 2007 — Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. wants young chewers to judge its newest product by the cover.

5, which began hitting checkout aisles this month, is the first new gum line Wrigley has introduced since 2001. The company hopes it can help hold off Cadbury Adams USA LLC, which has made inroads into Wrigley's historical dominance of the U.S. gum business.

The sugarless gum is also the first U.S. brand to emerge from the company's Goose Island innovation center.