Chips with “Designer Salt”

PepsiCo will soon introduce a secret new ingredient that improves the healthfulness in its Lay's potato chips: "designer salt" whose crystals are shaped and sized to reduce the sodium intake consumers ingest with each chip. Pepsi recently pledged to reduce the average sodium per serving in its products by 25% over the next five years. As consumer and government pressure for healthier food products mounts, PepsiCo's move attempts to get ahead of the curve of potential demand shifts or new regulations…


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Why the Rock Band Network is the Greatest Innovation since Colored Buttons

Rock Band Network, which was announced last year, has just been released in open beta, which means anyone with the gall to hit up their multi-track recorders can begin programming songs into the system by downloading the software. Of course, this all comes at a price, since creating your own songs will technically classify you as a developer you'll have to register at the XNA Creator's Club for $100 a year before you can start running the software…


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A Little Chip Designed by Apple Itself

The most notable aspect of Apple's new iPad is the A4, the chip that powers the tablet device and was developed in house. As we first highlighted last week, the A4 chip is the first fruit to come of Apple's 2008 acquisition of P.A. Semi, a low-power chipmaker. Recent upticks in supplier and channel risk have made vertical integration an especially attractive strategic decision for many firms. In periods of increased volatility, a collection of diversified businesses provides executives visibility into currently volatile leading indicators of performance, and this information could lead to smarter capital-allocation decisions…


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Where innovation creates value

Value innovation is defined as delivering exceptional value to the most important customer in the value chain all the time, every time. Unlike other forms of innovation, the most important customer can be internal or external to the organization. Exceptional value can be delivered in many other ways besides a new product or service. It could be a new process, a new way of going to market or business model, a new way of delivering the product or service, new packaging, or new services. Any organization of any size, whether for-profit or not-for-profit, an association, a government agency, a school board and so on can use the value innovation methodology. Support groups within an organization such as IT, finance, purchase and human resource can use these tools to deliver much greater value to the most important customers in their business units…


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