At the Reuters Consumer and Retail Summit in New York, executives from Whirlpool talked up the company’s new innovation strategy: “Innovation is changing the game and we think that makes us less sensitive to some of these fluctuations that you see in the market around interest rates.” From the comments made by the head of the company’s North American operations, it sounds like Whirlpool is trying to speed up the product replacement cycle by introducing a variety of innovative new products, thereby driving sales:

“David Swift, Whirlpool’s president for North America, said products that offer new features were helping to speed up the pace at which consumers buy appliances. New Whirlpool products this year include a smaller version of the Duet front-loading washer-dryer pair and a top-loading washer, the Cabrio. Both washing machines use less water and energy. About five years ago, Swift said, consumers were replacing appliances about once every 12 years. But today, that replacement cycle is closer to 7 or 8 years, he added.”

Anyway, if you click on the Reuters article, there’s a link to an interview with a top Whirlpool executive, who talks about the “Exciting Times in Laundry.” It’s about a 4-minute video, and it gives a clearer picture of how Whirlpool is positioning its innovation strategy.

Tags: innovation strategy Whirlpool

Over the weekend, Edward Cody of the Washington Post took a closer look at Chinese innovation, which is now being encouraged by the top echelons of the Chinese Communist Party:

Instead of millions of Chinese youths assembling somebody else’s inventions, the party leadership has concluded, the time is right for China to come up with its own ideas and sell them to everyone else. The question of whether China can pull off this transformation — from workshop of the world to cradle of invention — is key to the giant country’s future. The answer will help determine whether a government anchored in 150-year-old Marxist ideology can pursue economic expansion, satisfy the needs of 1.3 billion people and take a place among global powers in an age when knowledge is the highest-earning product.

Although political dogma here seems stuck in the past, economic innovation has become a new Communist Party catchword. Even while they enforce political conformity, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao rarely let a speech go by these days without urging their countrymen to think up new products. Most recently, Hu told scientists and engineers they must make China “a nation of innovation.”

These ideas are illustrated with a steady stream of examples from the world of Chinese fashion, which makes the article a bit choppy to read at times. Little nuggets about Chinese business innovation are interlaced with the tales of up-and-coming Chinese fashion designers. Several times, Shanghai fashion designers are offered up as paradigms of Chinese innovation, even while the article is ostensibly about business and economic innovation. Plus, the photo gallery (”A Nation of Innovation”) attached to the article is full of photos of new Chinese fashion designs, and not photos of technology or business innovators. The attached pic, for example, is of fashion designer Wang Wei, who “dreams up swishy dresses for rich women abroad.”

This emphasis on fashion leads to a lot of forced comparisons throughout the article - “difficulty in attracting R&D funding” is equated to “the difficulty for Chinese fashion designers in winning fame on the world’s runways.” Or, the “conformity of Chinese schoolchildren” is compared to the “conformity of Chinese fashion tastes.” Finally, the article hints strongly that fashion designers are leading the great leap forward for innovation within the country: “In the end, China’s originality may arise from the crude fashions in vogue with country girls who come to the big city sporting spangles on their jeans and sharp points on their shoes…”

Memo to self: that sounds like a great follow-up to The Devil Wears Prada: “Chinese CEOs In Their Star-Spangled Jeans and Sharp-Pointed Shoes.” Contact literary agent about this.

Tags: China innovation

[image: Washington Post]