Posted by: Venessa Wong on November 25
Design thinking helped to shape Buick’s 2010 LaCrosse, it seems.
Seung-il (Sean) Lo, lead designer at GM’s Global Brand Strategy Studio in Warren, Mich. says the idea was to make the brand relevant to American consumers again-especially to young drivers. Buick's prestige has gradually faded as other autos claimed greater market share. (In the first half of 2009, the top five best selling cars were: the Ford F-series, Toyota Camry, Chevrolet Silverado, Honda Accord, and Toyota Corolla.)
Continue reading "Can the LaCrosse bring sexy back to Buick?"
Posted by: Michael Arndt on November 25
Everyone loves a list, especially (at this blog at least) one that ranks innovative companies. We publish our own annual Top 50 roster, which you can see here. Strategos, an innovation consultancy that is owned by UTEK, just released a Top 10 list of its own.
The rankings overlap a bit—Apple, LG, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are on both—but the order is quite different. At BusinessWeek, Apple is first, followed by Google, Toyota, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Strategos puts LG in the lead, trailed immediately by Nintendo and Microsoft. As for Apple, it ranks 10th.
One obvious reason for the different lineups: The Strategos list includes only consumer electronics companies, while ours encompasses companies across all industries.
Since I first posted this, I had a chance to talk with Strategos CEO Peter Skarzynski about Apple's relatively poor showing in the ranking, which is based on a consumer survey. Apple's chief shortcoming, he says, is "uniqueness." Its products are so common today that they seem commonplace. Even Microsoft, lifted by high scores for the Xbox and Zune, rates 15 points ahead of Apple on uniqueness.
LG also does well on uniqueness, as well as quality, usefulness, dependability, and, in some regions of the country, coolness.
Skarzynski says Apple's results floored everyone at Strategos. "We triple- and quadruple-checked the data," he says. They checked out.
Here's the entire Strategos Top 10:
1. LG
2. Nintendo
3. Microsoft
4. Sony
5. Hitachi
6. Canon
7. Sharp
8. NetApp
9. Audiovox
10. Apple
Posted by: Michael Arndt on November 22
Patent volume, based on new analysis, isn't necessarily a valid proxy for innovation. Tallies of U.S. patent grants are published every year, giving IBM reason to strut since it invariably comes out on top. (Last year, as IBM notes here, it was the first entity to bag more than 4,000.) And recently I wagged a finger at Ford Motor in a blog post, based on patent data from Thomson Reuters that showed Ford ranked far behind in new patents for alternative energy and other innovative automotive technology.
But a study by the Patent Board, an intellectual-property consultancy, shows there are other—and better—ways to quantify innovation. The company looked at all active U.S. patents in one field, automobile collision-avoidance technology. Ranked by sheer volume, Honda Motor is No. 1, with 54. That's almost twice second-place Panasonic, which has 28. (Only two U.S.-based companies make the Top 10: TRW Automotive, in fifth place with 22, and Delphi, which is tied for eighth with 17.)
Ranked by other metrics, though, Honda isn't a leader. In a scorecard in November's Intellectual Property Today, the Patent Board publishes five more ways to put a value on patent portfolios, including citations by other patent seekers, innovation cycle time, and age. Honda does no better than second and as poorly as sixth. Delphi leads, for instance, when it comes to having the newest patents, while Fuji Heavy Industries is fastest at turning ideas into patents.
Remember this when the list of 2009 patent winners is announced.
Posted by: Venessa Wong on November 19
American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) is giving its shoppers 15 seconds of fame. A 15,000 square foot LED display atop the retailer's new store in Times Square, which opened on November 19, is adding more flash to New York’s busy hub. Anyone who makes a purchase can broadcast a photo and a 20 character-long message on the screen, which towers over the corner of 46th Street and Broadway. Already, one man popped the question on the big screen (she said yes).
I headed to the new store this afternoon and took a photo with my BusinessWeek colleague Anne Vandermey. One of the AE staffers operating the studio, which is in the lower level, said that in the last hour he had photographed more than 50 people (some in groups). They came from Ireland, the U.K., Germany, Australia and other countries.
Continue reading "American Eagle Outfitters offers 15 secs of fame in Times Square"
Posted by: Jay Greene on November 17
My 11-year-old son had a dilemma last night. He had zipped through the first two books in the Twilight series and was keen to start on the third, Eclipse. But the book my wife quickly picked up at the library was in Spanish. Oops.
So we tried an experiment. Two weeks ago, I won a Sony Reader Pocket Edition in a raffle. It’s a slim gadget with a 5-inch screen, the electronics giant’s answer to the Amazon Kindle. I futzed with it a bit since I got it, but really hadn’t put it through its paces.
Last night was my son’s turn. One of the neat features of the Sony Reader is that you can “borrow” electronic books from participating libraries, including ones in New York, Chicago and my public library in Seattle. So I went to digital media page on its Web site and searched for Eclipse. It turns out that six of the library’s eight copies of the book in Adobe’s eBook format, which works with Sony’s eBook devices, were available to borrow for 21 days. I typed in my library card number and PIN, clicked download, and a few seconds later, the book was on my PC. Then, I connected the Sony Reader via the USB port and the book zipped over to my device.
My Pocket Edition version is the least expensive of the Sony Readers, priced at $199. Sony has one other Reader on the market now, the $299 Touch Edition, a 6-inch touch-screen model. And on Dec. 18 it will launch the $399 Daily Edition, a 7-inch touch-screen version with 3G connectivity, so users can download books without having to plug the device into their PCs.
Continue reading "Sony's Digital Book Downloads from the Public Library"
