Nabisco Snack Case In 1993 Nabisco placed a particular emphasis on new products and derived 30% of its sales from them. In the previous five years they had five $100 million products. They pointed out that the following SnackWell story (first year sales of nearly $200 million) was typical of their company, but the process may not be suitable for other companies because all innovators are not created equal. Nabisco's path was the result of a review carried out when they realized they were suffering from the "silo" problem and others. People didn't talk to each other. In their new process, they looked for new segments, not limited to foods and not limited to traditional food channels. For example, one new product involved selling individual-sized snack packs in video stores and movie theaters. Their process had three key requirements: 1) the item had to fill a real gap, 2) the item had to follow a key trend, and 3) the entire project had to be executed flawlessly. Making just one or two hasn't worked in the food industry. Gaps were discovered in two ways. The first was a sophisticated gap analysis method for studying markets, likely built around the methodologies you will study later in the course. The second was an attribute analysis method that looked for ways in which a cookie could be created specifically for a user, for an occasion, or simply physically different. For SnackWell's the gap was the user gap: biscuits for adults. The kids had theirs, but the adults didn't have cookies with the characteristics they wanted, i.e. "great taste, no fat, better for you." The second requirement, on a key trend, was easily met: there was very strong growth in adults. the population and adults clearly desired well-being. The third key, flawless execution, was achieved as follows. Nabisco believed in ideation and creativity. The ideas came from employees in general, from the gap analysis (above) and from their special environment in the technical development departments. They encouraged blue sky ideation, provided a "skunkworks" environment allowing free time for further personal concepts, staff members could present their ideas to management at annual trade shows in May, and organized brainstorming sessions where the Development staff joined marketing, finance, operations and research and development. New product concepts that looked good (like SnackWell did) were put through a feasibility check (could they be retooled for this, did they interfere with production, etc.).