Not too long ago, it was feared that 3M had lost its innovation mojo. Too much emphasis on efficiency and six sigma quality and cost-cutting had taken away its traditional competitive advantage (see “”At 3M a Struggle Between Efficiency and Creativity,” BusinessWeek, June 11, 2007).
Now we can read about “3M’s Innovation Revival,” (Fortune, September 24, 2010). A nice fit with a discussion about new product development.
Competition is bringing innovation and change to the vending machine market. This article “Restocking the Snack Machine” (Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2010 – non-subscribers, click here) tells about some recent innovations.
BusinessWeek annually ranks the “50 Most Innovative Companies” and writes a whole package of stories. Well, the latest issue is online now. My link sends you to the home page, where you can link to an overview article, a Table with the innovation leaders, a slide show of “25 companies on the cutting-edge,” innovation close ups with HTC and LG, and an overview of an annual survey of executives. A really nice package. The examples probably work best for new product development.
This BusinessWeek article “IBM May Not Be the Patent King After All” (January 13, 2010) and related slide show “The World’s 25 Most Inventive Companies” reports…
… a study conducted for Bloomberg BusinessWeek by Ocean Tomo, a Chicago intellectual property consulting firm, concludes that IBM’s collection of U.S. patents over the past five years ranks only eighth in value. No. 1 is Microsoft, which ranked third, with 2,906 patents issued last year.
While this list did not contain any surprises, the order was different than I expected. Of course the methodology used to make such lists is key.
New products are important, but in these hard times many firms have cut new product development budgets. Now many firms are learning jugaad – and Indian approach to new product development that focuses on innovation at low costs. See “India’s Next Global Export: Innovation“” (BusinessWeek, December 2, 2009). This might help with discussions of NPD or in control and cost management.