A Brief Look at Italian History

The history of Italy is characterized by two periods of unity—the Roman Empire (27 BCE–476 CE) and the modern democratic republic formed after the end of World War II. Between those two periods may have been a millennium and a half of division and disruption, but that disruption saw one of the worlds great flowering of art, the Renaissance (circa 1400–1600 CE). Italy, sitting in southwestern Europe, is comprised largely of a boot-shaped peninsula that extends out into the Mediterranean, as well as a region on the core landmass of the continent. It is bordered by Switzerland and Austria to the north, Slovenia and the Adriatic Sea to the east, France and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west, and the Ionian Sea and the Mediterranean to the south. Italy also includes the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. Roman Empire Between the sixth to third centuries BCE, the Italian city of Rome conquered Peninsular Italy; over the next few centuries, this empire spread to dominate the Mediterranean and Western Europe. The Roman Empire would go on to define much of Europes history, leaving a mark on culture and society that outlasted the military and political machinations of its leadership. After the Italian part of the Roman Empire declined and â€Å"fell† in the fifth century (an event no one at the time realized was so significant), Italy was the target of several invasions. The previously united region broke apart into several smaller bodies, including the Papal States, governed by the Catholic Pope. Renaissance and the Kingdom of Italy By the eighth and ninth centuries, a number of powerful and trading-oriented city-states emerged, including Florence, Venice, and Genoa; these were the forces that incubated the Renaissance. Italy and its smaller states also went through stages of foreign domination. These smaller states were the fertile grounds of the Renaissance, which changed Europe massively once more and owed a lot to the competing states trying to outspend each other on glorious art and architecture. Unification and independence movements throughout Italy developed ever stronger voices in the 19th century after Napoleon created the short-lived Kingdom of Italy. A war between Austria and France in 1859 allowed several small states to merge with Piedmont; a tipping point had been reached and the Kingdom of Italy was formed in 1861, growing by 1870—when the Papal States joined—to cover almost all of what we now call Italy. Mussolini and Modern Italy The Kingdom of Italy was subverted when Mussolini took power as a fascist dictator, and although he was initially skeptical of German dictator Adolf Hitler, Mussolini took Italy into World War II rather than risk losing out on what he perceived as a land grab. That choice caused his downfall. Modern Italy is now a democratic republic and has been since the modern constitution came into effect in 1948. This followed a referendum in 1946, which voted to abolish the previous monarchy by 12.7 million to 10.7 million votes. Key Rulers Julius Caesar c. 100 BCE–44 BCE A great general and statesman, Julius Caesar won a civil war to become both sole ruler of the extensive Roman domains and dictator for life, setting in motion a process of transformation that led to the creation of the Roman Empire. He was assassinated by enemies and is arguably the most famous ancient Roman. Giuseppe Garibaldi 1807–1882 After exile in South America, forced upon him because of his role in an attempted republican revolution, Guiseppi Garibaldi commanded forces in several Italian conflicts of the 19th century. He played an important role in Italian unification when he and his volunteer army of â€Å"Redshirts† captured Sicily and Naples and allowed them to join the Kingdom of Italy. Although Garibaldi fell out with the new king, in 1862, he was offered a command in the U.S. Civil War by President Abraham Lincoln. That never occurred because Lincoln wouldnt agree to abolish slavery at that early date. Benito Mussolini 1883–1945 Mussolini became the youngest-ever prime minister of Italy in 1922, using his fascist organization of â€Å"Blackshirts† to propel him to power. He transformed the office into a dictatorship and allied with Hitler’s Germany, but was forced to flee when World War II turned Italy against him. He was captured and executed.

The Nazi Regime - 959 Words

The rise of the Nazi regime in Germany in the early part of the 20th century was an impressive, and nearly unforeseen incident that had long-lasting implications on the rest of the Western world. While the Nazi party was extreme in their ideologies, the circumstances in which they came to power were dire; Germany had been crippled by a massive depression and was being forced to pay reparations through the â€Å"Young Plan† which required Germany to pay the Allied forces â€Å"a series of annual payments extending until 1988†(Bullock, 160). The German people were left without any leadership in a time of disparity, but naturally, a strong leader filled this vacuum. Even though the actions of the Nazi party were extreme and unjustifiable, they needed†¦show more content†¦At the time that Hitler was appointed Chancellor, Alfred Hugenburg said â€Å"‘I’ve just committed the greatest stupidity of my life; I have allied myself with the greatest demagogue in world history’† (Briggs Clavin, 254). Even the politician who appointed Hitler was unaware of how radical his ideology was, and how influential he would be as a leader to the German people. After the Nazi party gained control of the government, there was no way to make them give up this power. The people were at the mercy of the fascist government, and Hitler had no intention of returning to democracy. Hitler believed that â€Å"‘[Germany’s] constitution only marks out the arena of battle, not the goal†¦ once we possess the constitutional power, we will mould the state into the shape we hold suitable’† (Briggs Clavin, 255). If anyone should shoulder the blame for the rise of this extremist party, it should be the failed League of Nations; who had put Germany at their mercy by strangling their economy, and Neville Chamberlin who saw the increasing strength of the German nation under Adolf Hitler, but chose to ignore that Germany was increasing their military strength. 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How PG Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate Free Essays

string(81) " Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s disruptive-innovation theory\." SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION Spotlight ARTWORK Josef Schulz, Form #1, 2001 C-print, 120 x 160 cm How PG Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate Inside the company’s new-growth factory by Bruce Brown and Scott D. Anthony 64 Harvard Business Review June 2011 HBR. ORG Bruce Brown is the chief technology o? cer of Procter Gamble. We will write a custom essay sample on How PG Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate or any similar topic only for you Order Now Scott D. Anthony is the managing director of Innosight. June 2011 Harvard Business Review 65 B SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION 66 Harvard Business Review June 2011 BACK IN 2000 the prospects for Procter Gamble’s Tide, the biggest brand in the company’s fabric and household care division, seemed limited. The laundry detergent had been around for more than 50 years and still dominated its core markets, but it was no longer growing fast enough to support PG’s needs. A decade later Tide’s revenues have nearly doubled, helping push annual division revenues from $12 billion to almost $24 billion. The brand is surging in emerging markets, and its iconic bull’seye logo is turning up on an array of new products and even new businesses, from instant clothes fresheners to neighborhood dry cleaners. This isn’t accidental. It’s the result of a strategic effort by PG over the past decade to systematize innovation and growth. To understand PG’s strategy, we need to go back more than a century to the sources of its inspiration— Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. In the 1870s Edison created the world’s first industrial research lab, Menlo Park, which gave rise to the technologies behind the modern electric-power and motion-picture industries. Under his inspired direction, the lab churned out ideas; Edison himself ultimately held more than 1,000 patents. Edison of course understood the importance of mass production, but it was his friend Henry Ford who, decades later, perfected it. In 1910 the Ford Motor Company shifted the production of its famous Model T from the Piquette Avenue Plant, in Detroit, to its new Highland Park complex nearby. Although the assembly line wasn’t a novel concept, Highland Park showed what it was capable of: In four years Ford slashed the time required to build a car from more than 12 hours to just 93 minutes. How could PG marry the creativity of Edison’s lab with the speed and reliability of Ford’s factory? The answer its leaders devised, a â€Å"new-growth factory,† is still ramping up. But already it has helped the company strengthen both its core businesses and its ability to capture innovative new-growth opportunities. PG’s efforts to systematize the serendipity that so often sparks new-business creation carry important lessons for leaders faced with shrinking product life cycles and increasing global competition. Laying the Foundation Innovation has long been the backbone of PG’s growth. As chairman, president, and CEO Bob McDonald notes, â€Å"We know from our history that while promotions may win quarters, innovation wins decades. The company spends nearly $2 billion annually on RD—roughly 50% more than its closest competitor, and more than most other competitors combined. Each year it invests at least another $400 million in foundational consumer research to discover opportunities for innovation, conducting some 20,000 studies involving more than 5 million consumers in nearly 100 countries. Odds are that as you’re reading this, PG researchers are in a store somewhere observing shoppers, or even in a consumer’s home. These investments are necessary but not sufficient to achieve PG’s innovation goals. â€Å"People will innovate for financial gain or for competitive advantage, but this can be self-limiting,† McDonald says. â€Å"There needs to be an emotional component as well—a source of inspiration that motivates people. † At PG that inspiration lies in a sense of purpose driven from the top down—the message that each innovation improves people’s lives. At the start of the 2000s only about 15% of PG’s innovations were meeting revenue and profit targets. So the company launched its now well-known Connect + Develop program to bring in outside innovations and built a robust stage-gate process to help manage ideas from inception to launch. (For more on C+D, see Larry Huston and Nabil Sakkab, â€Å"Connect and Develop: Inside Procter Gamble’s New Model for Innovation,† HBR March 2006. ) These actions showed early signs of raising innovation success rates, but it was clear that PG needed more breakthrough innovations. And it had to come up with them as reliably as Ford’s factory had rolled out Model Ts. HOW PG TRIPLED ITS INNOVATION SUCCESS RATE? HBR. ORG Idea in Brief Procter Gamble is a famous innovator. Nonetheless, in the early 2000s only 15% of its innovations were meeting their revenue and pro? t targets. To address this, the company set about building organizational structures to systematize innovation. The resulting new-growth factory includes large newbusiness creation groups, focused project teams, and entrepreneurial guides who help teams rapidly prototype and test new products and business models in the market. The teams follow a step-by-step business development manual and use specialized project and portfolio management tools. Innovation and strategy assessments, once separate, are now combined in revamped executive reviews. PG’s experience suggests six lessons for leaders looking to build new-growth factories: Coordinate the factory with the company’s core businesses, be a vigilant portfolio manager, start small and grow carefully, create tools for gauging new businesses, make sure the right people are doing the right work, and nurture cross-pollination. ithout a further boost to its organic growth capabilities, the company would still have trouble hitting its targets. PG’s leaders recognized that the kind of growth the company was after couldn’t come from simply doing more of the same. It needed to come up with more breakthrough innovations—ones that could create completely new markets. And it needed to do this as reliably as Henry Ford’s Highla nd Park factory had rolled out Model Ts. In 2004 Gil Cloyd, then the chief technology officer, and A. G. Lafley, then the CEO, tasked two 30-year PG veterans, John Leikhim and David Goulait, with designing a new-growth factory whose intellectual underpinnings would derive from the Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s disruptive-innovation theory. You read "How PG Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate" in category "Papers" The basic concept of disruption—driving growth through new offerings that are simpler, more convenient, easier to access, or more affordable—was hardly foreign to PG. Many of the company’s powerhouse brands, including Tide, Crest, Pampers, and Swiffer, had followed disruptive paths. Leikhim and Goulait, with support from other managers, began by holding a two-day workshop for seven new-product-development teams, guided by facilitators from Innosight (a firm Christensen cofounded). The attendees explored how to shake up embedded ways of thinking that can inhibit disruptive approaches. They formulated creative ways to address critical commercial questions—for example, whether demand would be sufficient to warrant a new-product launch. Learning from the workshop helped spur the development of new products, such as the probiotic supplement Align, and also bolstered existing ones, such as Pampers. In the years that followed, Leikhim and Goulait shored up the factory’s foundation, working with Cloyd and other PG leaders to: Teach senior management and project team members the mind-sets and behaviors that foster disruptive growth. The training, which has changed over time, initially ranged from short modules on topics such as assessing the demand for an early-stage idea to multiday courses in entrepreneurial thinking. Form a group of new-growth-business guides to help teams working on disruptive projects. These experts might, for instance, advise teams to remain small until their project’s key commercial questions, such as whether consumers would habitually use the new product, have been answered. The guides include several entrepreneurs who have succeeded—and, even more important, failed—in starting businesses. Develop organizational structures to drive new growth. For example, in a handful of business About the units the company created small groups focused Spotlight Artist Each month we illustrate primarily on new-growth initiatives. The groups our Spotlight package with (which, like the training, have evolved significantly) a series of works from an acaugmented an existing entity, FutureWorks, whose complished artist. We hope charter is to create new brands and business mod- that the lively and cerebral creations of these photograels. Dedicated teams within the groups conducted phers, painters, and instalmarket research, developed technology, created lation artists will infuse our pages with additional energy business plans, and tested assumptions for specific and intelligence and amplify projects. hat are often complex and Produce a process manual—a step-by-step abstract concepts. This month’s artist is guide to creating new-growth businesses. The Josef Schulz, a German manual includes overarching principles as well as photographer who often detailed procedures and templates to help teams turns his lens on modern industrial constructs and describe opportunities, identify requirements for digitally strips away de? ning success, monitor progress, make go/no-go decisions, details to render moreand more. abstract, universally relRun demonstration projects to showcase the evant images. In the ? rst step I’m a photographer emerging factory’s work. One of these was a line of with his limitations,† he pocket-size products called Swash, which quickly once told an interviewer, refresh clothes: For example, someone who’s in a â€Å"and then an artist with his freedom of decisions. † hurry can give a not-quite-clean shirt a spray rather View more of the artist’s than putting it through the wash. work at josefschulz. de. June 2011 Harvard Business Review 67 SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION Sustaining Commercial Commercial innovations use creative marketing, packaging, and promotional approaches to grow existing o? erings. During the 2010 Winter Olympics, PG ran a series of ads celebrating mothers. The campaign covered 18 brands, was viewed repeatedly by hundreds of millions of consumers, and drove $100 million in revenues. PG’s Four Types of Innovation Sustaining innovations bring incremental improvements to existing products: a little more cleaning power to a laundry detergent, a better ? avor to a toothpaste. These provide what PG calls â€Å"er† bene? s—better, easier, cheaper—that are important to sustaining share among current customers and getting new people to try a product. Sharpening the Focus By 2008 PG had a working prototype of the factory, but the company’s innovation portfolio was weighed down by a proliferation of small projects. A. G. Lafley charged Bob McDonald (then the COO) and CTO Bruce Brown (a coauthor of this article) to dramatically increase innovation output by focusing the factory on fewer but bigger initiatives. McDonald and Brown’s team drove three critical improvements. First, rather than strictly separating innovations designed to bolster existing product lines from efforts to create new product lines or business models, PG increased its emphasis on an intermediate category: transformational-sustaining innovations, which deliver major new benefits in existing product categories. Consider the Crest brand, the market leader until the late 1990s, when it was usurped by Colgate. Looking for a comeback, in 2000 PG launched a disruptive innovation, Crest Whitestrips, that made teeth whitening at home affordable and easy. In 2006 it introduced Crest Pro-Health, which squeezes half a dozen benefits into one tube—the toothpaste fights cavities, plaque, tartar, stains, gingivitis, and bad breath. In 2010 it rolled out Crest 3D White, a line of advanced oral care products, including one that whitens teeth in two hours. Such efforts helped Crest retake the lead in many markets. Pro-Health and 3D White were both transformational-sustaining innovations, meant to appeal to current consumers while attracting new ones. These sorts of innovations share an mportant trait with market-creating disruptive innovations: They have a high degree of uncertainty—something the factory is specifically designed to manage. Second, PG strengthened organizational supports for the formation of transformationalsustaining and disruptive businesses. It established several new-business-creation groups, larger in size 68 Harvard Business Review June 2011 and scope than any previous growth-factory team, whose resources a nd management are kept carefully separate from the core business. These groups— dedicated teams led by a general manager—develop ideas that cut across multiple businesses, and also pursue entirely new business opportunities. One group covers all of PG’s beauty and personal care businesses; another covers its household care business (the parent unit of the fabric-and-household and the family-and-baby-care divisions); a third, FutureWorks, focuses largely on enabling different business models (it helped guide PG’s recent partnership with the Indian business Healthpoint Services). The new groups supplement (rather than replace) existing supports such as the Corporate Innovation Fund, which provides seed capital to ideas that might otherwise slip through the cracks. PG also created a specialized team called LearningWorks, which helps plan and execute in-market experiments to learn about purchase decisions and postpurchase use. Third, PG revamped its strategy development and review process. Innovation and strategy assessments had historically been handled separately. Now the CEO, CTO, and CFO explicitly link company, business, and innovation strategies. This integration, coupled with new analyses of such issues as competitive factors that could threaten a given business, has surfaced more opportunities for innovation. The process has also prompted examinations of each unit’s â€Å"production schedule,† or pipeline of growth opportunities, to ensure that it’s robust enough to deliver against growth goals for the next seven to 10 years. Evaluations are made of individual business units (feminine care, for example) as well as broad sectors (household care). This revised approach calls for each business unit to determine the mix of innovation types it needs to deliver the required growth. HOW PG TRIPLED ITS INNOVATION SUCCESS RATE? HBR. ORG Transformational-Sustaining Transformational-sustaining innovations reframe existing categories. They typically bring order-of-magnitude improvements and fundamental changes to a business and often lead to breakthroughs in market share, pro? t levels, and consumer acceptance. In 2009 PG introduced the wrinkle-reducing cream Olay Pro-X. Launching a $40-a-bottle product in the depths of a recession might seem a questionable strategy. But PG went ahead because it considered the product a transformational-sustaining innovation—clinically proven to be as e? ective as its much more expensive prescription counterparts, and superior to the company’s other antiaging o? erings. The cream and related products generated ? rst-year sales of $50 million in U. S. food retailers and drugstores alone. Disruptive Disruptive innovations represent newto-the-world business opportunities. A company enters entirely new businesses with radically new o? erings, as PG did with Swi? er and Febreze. Running the Factory Let’s return now to Tide, whose dramatic growth highlights the potential of PG’s approach. Over the past decade the brand has launched numerous products and product-line extensions, carved new paths in emerging markets, and tested a promising new business model. If you had looked for Tide in a U. S. supermarket 10 years ago, you would have found, for the most part, ordinary bottles and boxes of detergent. Now you’ll see the Tide name on dozens of products, all with different scents and capabilities. For example, in 2009 PG introduced a line of laundry additives called Tide Stain Release. Within a year, building on 26 patents, it incorporated these additives into a sible to 70% of Indian consumers and has helped to significantly increase Tide’s share in India. More radically, Swash moved the Tide brand out of the laundry room. The line has clear disruptive characteristics: Swash products don’t clean as thoroughly as laundry detergents or remove wrinkles as effectively as professional pressing. But because they’re quick and easy to use, they offer â€Å"good enough† occasional alternatives between washes. Swash took an unconventional path to commercialization. When the products were first sold, in a store near PG’s headquarters in Ohio, they carried a different brand name and had no apparent connection to Tide. After that experiment, PG opened a â€Å"pop up† Swash store at The Ohio State University. Both Tide Dry Cleaners is a factory innovation that represents an entirely new business model. new detergent, Tide with Acti-Lift—the first major redesign of Tide’s liquid laundry detergent in a decade. The product’s launch drove immediate marketshare growth of the Tide brand in the United States. PG has also customized formulations for emerging markets. Ethnographic research showed that about 80% of consumers in India wash their clothes by hand. They had to choose between detergents that were relatively gentle on the skin but not very good at actually cleaning clothes, and more-potent but harsher agents. With the problem clearly identified, in 2009 a team came up with Tide Naturals, which cleaned well without causing irritation. Mindful of the need in emerging markets to provide greater benefit at lower cost—â€Å"more for less†Ã¢â‚¬â€PG priced Tide Naturals 30% below comparably effective but harsher products. This made the Tide brand accestests helped the company understand how consumers would buy and use the products, which PG then began selling exclusively through Amazon and other online channels. In early 2011 the company ramped down its promotion of Swash, although learning from the effort will inform its work on other disruptive ideas in the clothes-refreshing space. Whereas Swash was a new product line, Tide Dry Cleaners represents an entirely new business model. It started when a team began exploring ways to disrupt the dry-cleaning market, using proprietary technologies and a unique store design grounded in insights about consumers’ frustrations with existing options. Many cleaning establishments are dingy, unfriendly places. Customers have to park, walk, and wait. Often the cleaners’ hours are inconvenient. PG’s alternative: bright, boldly colored cleaners June 2011 Harvard Business Review 69 SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION The Factory’s Consumer Research at Work In October 2010 PG launched the Gillette Guard razor in India, a transformational-sustaining innovation whose strategic intent was simple: to provide a cheaper and e? ective alternative for the hundreds of millions of Indians who use double-edged razors. The company’s researchers spent thousands of hours in the market to understand these consumers’ needs. They gained important insights by observing men in rural areas who, lacking indoor plumbing, typically shave outdoors using little or no water—and don’t shave every day. The single-blade Gillette Guard was thus designed to clean easily, with minimal water, and to manage longer stubble. The initial retail price was 15 rupees (33 cents), with re? ll cartridges for ? ve rupees (11 cents). Early tests showed that consumers preferred the new product to double-edged razors by a six-to-one margin. Its breakthrough performance and a? ordability position it for rapid growth. featuring specialized treatments, drive-through windows, and 24-hour storage lockers to facilitate after-hours drop-off and pickup. Using the new-growth factory’s process manual, the development team identified key assumptions about the proposed dry cleaners. For example, could the business model generate enough returns to attract store owners willing to pay up to $1 million for franchise rights? In 2009 PG’s guides helped the team open three pilots in Kansas City to try to find out. That year PG also formed Agile Pursuits Franchising, a subsidiary to oversee such efforts, and transferred ownership of the dry-cleaning venture to FutureWorks, whose main mission is to pursue new business models that lie outside PG’s established systems. It remains to be seen how Tide Dry Cleaners will fare, but one promising sign came in 2010, when Andrew Cherng, the founder of the Panda Restaurant Group, announced plans to open 150 franchises in four years. He told BusinessWeek, â€Å"I wasn’t around when McDonald’s was taking franchisees, [but] I’m not going to miss this one. † To ensure strategic cohesion and smart resource allocation, Tide’s innovation efforts have been closely coordinated through regular dialogues among several leaders—CEO McDonald, CTO Brown, the vice-chair of the household business unit, and the president of the fabric care division. They’ve also been the focus of discussions at Corporate Innovation Fund meetings and similar reviews. This isn’t just the methodical pursuit of a single innovation. It’s part of a steady stream of ideas in development—a factory humming with work. and learning, and personally engage. Our journey at PG suggests six lessons for leaders looking to create new-growth factories. 1. Closely coordinate the factory and the core business. Leaders sometimes see efforts to foster new growth as completely distinct from efforts to bolster the core; indeed, many in the innovation community have argued as much for years. Our experience indicates the opposite. First, new-growth efforts depend on a healthy core business. A healthy core produces a cash flow that can be invested in new growth. And we’ve all known times when an ailing core has demanded management’s full attention; a healthy core frees leaders to think about more-expansive growth initiatives. Second, a core business is rich with capabilities that can support new-growth efforts. Consider PG’s excellent relationships with major retailers. Those relationships are a powerful, hard-to-replicate asset that helps the factory expedite new-growth initiatives. Swiffer wouldn’t be Swiffer without them. Third, some of the tools for managing core efforts—particularly those that track a project’s progress—are also useful for managing new-growth efforts. And finally, the factory’s rapid-learning approach often yields insights that can strengthen existing product lines. One of the project teams at the 2004 workshop was seeking to spur conversion in emerging markets from cloth to disposable diapers. Subsequent in-market tests yielded a critical discovery: Babies who wore disposable diapers fell asleep 30% faster and slept 30 minutes longer than babies wearing cloth diapers—an obvious benefit for infants (and their parents). Advertising campaigns touting this advantage helped make Pampers the number one brand in several emerging markets. 2. Promote a portfolio mind-set. PG communicates to both internal and external stakeholders that it is building a varied portfolio of innovation Lessons for Leaders Efforts to build a new-growth factory in any company will fail unless senior managers create the right organizational structures, provide the proper resources, allow sufficient time for experimentation 70 Harvard Business Review June 2011 HOW PG TRIPLED ITS INNOVATION SUCCESS RATE? HBR. ORG approaches, ranging from sustaining to disruptive ones. See the sidebar â€Å"PG’s Four Types of Innovation. †) It uses a set of master-planning tools to match the pace of innovation to the overall needs of the business. It also deploys portfolio-optimization tools that help managers identify and kill the least-promising programs and nurture the best bets. These tools create projections for every active idea, including estimates of the financial potential and the human and capital investments that will be required. Some ideas are evaluated with classic net-present-value calculations, others with a risk-adjusted real-option approach, and still others with more-qualitative criteria. Although the tools assemble a rank-ordered list of projects, PG’s portfolio management isn’t, at its core, a mechanical exercise; it’s a dialogue about resource allocation and business-growth building blocks. Numerical input informs but doesn’t dictate decisions. A portfolio approach has several benefits. First, it sets up the expectation that different projects will be managed, resourced, and measured in different ways, just as an investor would use different criteria to evaluate an equity investment and a real estate one. Second, because the portfolio consists largely of sustaining and transformational-sustaining efforts, seeing it as a whole highlights the critical importance of these activities, which protect and extend legitimate disagreement about the best way to organize for new growth. Whereas we believe in a factory with relatively strong ties to the core, some advocate a â€Å"skunkworks† organization. Others argue for â€Å"distinct but linked† organizations under an â€Å"ambidextrous† leader; still others recommend mirroring the structure of a venture capital firm. (PG’s factory uses several organizational approaches. Treating capability development itself as a new-growth innovation lets companies try different approaches and learn what works best for them. A staged approach serves another important purpose: It’s a built-in reminder that a new-growth factory is not a quick fix. The factory won’t provide a sudden boost to next quarter’s result s, nor can it instantly rein in an out-of-control core business that’s veering from crisis to crisis. GILLETTE GUARD After thousands of hours of research in the ? eld, PG learned that a single-blade razor was a cheaper and e? ective alternative to double-edged razors for many consumers in India. CREST 3D WHITE Usurped by Colgate in the late 1990s, Crest has regained the lead in many markets owing to its introduction of several innovative oral care products, including ones that make teeth whitening at home a? ordable and easy. 4. Create new tools for gauging new businesses. Anticipated and nascent markets are notoriously hard to analyze. Detailed follow-up with one of the project teams that attended the pilot workshop showed PG that it needed new tools for this purpose. PG now conducts â€Å"transaction learning experiments,† or TLEs, in which a team â€Å"makes a little and sells a little,† thus letting consumers vote with their wallets. Teams have sold small amounts of products online, at mall kiosks, in pop-up stores, and at amusement parks—even in the company store PG now conducts â€Å"transaction learning experiments,† which let consumers vote with their wallets. core businesses. Finally, a portfolio approach helps reinforce the message that any project, particularly a disruptive one, may carry substantial risk and might not deliver commercial results—and that’s fine, as long as the portfolio accounts for the risk. 3. Start small and grow carefully. Remember how the new-growth factory began: with a simple two-day workshop. It then expanded to small-scale pilots in several business units before becoming a companywide initiative. Staged investment allows for early, rapid revision—before lines scribbled on a hypothetical organizational chart are engraved in stone. It also provides for targeted experimentation. For example, there is and outside company cafeterias. PG devised a venture capital approach to testing the market for Align, its probiotic supplement, providing seed capital for a controlled pilot. The company has also tested entire business models—recall the Kansas City pilots of Tide Dry Cleaners. 5. Make sure you have the right people doing the right work. Building the factory forced PG to change the way it staffed certain teams. At any given time the company has hundreds of teams working on various innovation efforts. In the past, most teams consisted mainly of part-time members—employees who had other responsibilities pulling at them. But disruptive and transformational-sustaining efforts June 2011 Harvard Business Review 71 SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION HBR. ORG CONNECT WITH THE AUTHORS Do you have questions or comments about this article? The authors will respond to reader feedback at hbr. org. TIDE DRY CLEANERS Still in an early stage, this innovation arose in part from insights about consumers’ frustrations with the dinginess and inconvenience of most existing drycleaning establishments. require undivided attention. (As the old saying goes, nine women can’t make a baby in a month. ) There need to be people who wake up each day and go to sleep each night obsessing about the new business. New-growth teams also need to be small and nimble, and they should include seasoned members. PG found that big teams often bog down because they pursue too many ideas at once, whereas small teams are better able to quickly focus on the mostpromising initiatives. Having several members with substantial innovation experience helps teams confidently make sound judgment calls when data are inconclusive or absent. Finally, building a factory requires a substantial investment in widespread, ongoing training. Changing mind-sets begins, literally, with teaching a new language. Key terms such as â€Å"disruptive innovation,† â€Å"job to be done,† â€Å"business model,† and â€Å"critical assumptions† must be clearly and consistently defined. PG reinforces key innovation concepts both at large meetings and at smaller, focused workshops, and in 2007 it established a â€Å"disruptive innovation college. People working on new-growth projects can choose from more than a dozen courses, ranging from basic innovation language to designing and executing a TLE, sketching out a business model, staffing a new-growth team, and identifying a job to be done. 6. Encourage intersections. Successful innovation requires rich cross-pollinat ion both inside and outside the organization. PG’s Connect + Develop program is part of a larger effort to intersect with other disciplines and gain new perspectives. Over the past few years PG has: †¢ Shared people with noncompeting companies. In 2008 PG and Google swapped two dozen employees for a few weeks. PG wanted greater exposure to online models; Google was interested in learning more about how to build brands. †¢ Engaged even more outside innovators. In 2010 PG refreshed its C+D goals. It aims to become the partner of choice for innovation collaboration, and to triple C+D’s contribution to PG’s innovation development (which would mean deriving $3 billion of the company’s annual sales growth from outside innovators). It has expanded the program to forge additional connections with government labs, universities, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, consortia, and venture capital firms. †¢ Brought in outside talent. PG has traditionally promoted from within. But it recognized that total reliance on this approach could stunt its ability to create new-growth businesses. So it began bringing in high-level people to address needs beyond its core capabilities, as when it hired an outsider to run Agile Pursuits Franchising. In that one stroke, it acquired expertise in franchise-based business models that would have taken years to build organically. SOME THINK it’s foolish for large companies to even attempt to create innovative-growth businesses. They maintain that organizations should just outsource innovation, by acquiring promising start-ups. But PG’s efforts appear to be working. Recall that in 2000 only 15% of its innovation efforts met profit and revenue targets. Today the figure is 50%. The past fiscal year was one of the most productive innovation years in the company’s history, and the company’s three- and five-year innovation portfolios are sufficient to deliver against their growth objectives. Projections suggest that the typical initiative in 2014 and 2015 will have nearly twice the revenue of today’s initiatives. That’s a sixfold increase in output without any significant increase in inputs. Our experience tells us that although individual creativity can be unpredictable and uncontrollable, collective creativity can be managed. Although the next Tide or Crest innovation might stumble, the factory’s methodical approach should bring many more innovations successfully to market. The factory process can create sustainable sources of revenue growth—no matter how big a company becomes. HBR Reprint R1106C At PG’s â€Å"disruptive innovation college,† people working on new-growth projects can choose from more than a dozen courses. 72 Harvard Business Review June 2011 Harvard Business Review Notice of Use Restrictions, May 2009 Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business Publishing Newsletter content on EBSCOhost is licensed for the private individual use of authorized EBSCOhost users. It is not intended for use as assigned course material in academic institutions nor as corporate learning or training materials in businesses. Academic licensees may not use this content in electronic reserves, electronic course packs, persistent linking from syllabi or by any other means of incorporating the content into course resources. Business licensees may not host this content on learning management systems or use persistent linking or other means to incorporate the content into learning management systems. Harvard Business Publishing will be pleased to grant permission to make this content available through such means. For rates and permission, contact permissions@harvardbusiness. org. How to cite How PG Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate, Papers

Legalization of marijuana in the U.S free essay sample

Marijuana has been use ford thousands of years by people from different culture as a medicine. Millions of people use marijuana in the U. S. and is increasing every year. Marijuana is a controlled substance that should be legalized for medical use. Marijuana is a plant that has been by people from all over the world, and marijuana should not be classified as an illegal drug. The effects of marijuana, the politics view on marijuana, the ways that marijuana could be used in the medical field, and the future of legalized marijuana. Marijuana is defined by http://www. dictionary. com/ â€Å"as a strong smelling plant from whose dried leaves a number of euphoria causing and hallucinogenic drugs. † Marijuana is a controlled substance that should be legalized for recreational use. Marijuana is a plant that has been by people from all over the world, and most part of society classified marijuana as an illegal drug. Also, marijuana is commonly known like pot, grass, weed, dope, sees, skunk, Mary Jane, and Cannabis Sativa. Marijuana is not a drug, and shouldn’t be in our judicial system as an illegal drug. The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIC) â€Å"define the immediate effects after taking marijuana include rapid heart beat, disorientation, lack of physical coordination, often followed by depression or sleepiness. Some users suffer panic attacks or anxiety. † However, it has never led to a single case of human death from overdose in its entire history. This is a sharp contrast to the high mortality rate of other drug like cocaine. Plus, the side effects of marijuana are not bad at all compare to Codeine one of the most popular pain medications used in the U.S. The official website of drugs. com describe the side effects of Codeine as: â€Å"slow heart rate, weak pulse, fainting, shallow breathing; feeling like you might pass out; confusion, agitation, hallucinations, unusual thoughts or behavior; feelings of extreme happiness or sadness; seizure. Marijuana was widely used by some of the world’s earliest civilizations. Cannabis Now Magazine state that â€Å"history documents show that the fiber-rich cannabis plant was used to produce rope and woven fabrics around 7000 B. C. in Central and South Asia. † Plus, marijuana is in the Chinese manuscripts dating back to 2700 B. C. this plant was used as medicine. Marijuana is define by http://www. dictionary. com as a strong smelling plant from whose dried leaves a number of euphoria causing and hallucinogenic drugs are prepared. Marijuana has many names like ganja, pot, grass, weed, dope, sees, sens, skunk, Mary Jane, and Cannabis Sativa. Cannabis Now Magazine publish on the article History of Marijuana in America that â€Å"After being used by half of the world for nearly 8,000 years, Marijuana reached North America with Christopher Columbus in 1492 A.D. This is a plant that has been grown for fiber and as a source of medicine all those years. But the plant didn’t become popular until the early 20th century. Since marijuana become popular this plant has become controversial because of people misunderstandings marijuana. All of the soon this recreational plant became considered as harmful as cocaine or heroin. However, Cannabis Now Team added that â€Å"the United States Pharmacopeia had marijuana on its list of pharmaceuticals from 1850 until 1942. Marijuana was introduced in America after the Spanish-American War by Mexican-Americans who work on large farms in American fields. These immigrants cultivated marijuana, which they brought with them from Mexico and they enjoyed smoking marijuana for recreational purposes. † Marijuana view by part of society as drug. On the other hand, a lot of people believe that marijuana is not a drug, and shouldn’t be in our judicial system as an illegal drug. the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIC) define â€Å"Marijuana is a dry, shredded green and brown mix of leaves, flowers, stems, and seeds from the hemp plant Cannabis sativa. And the immediate effects after taking marijuana include rapid heartbeat, disorientation, lack of physical coordination, often followed by depression or sleepiness. Some users suffer panic attacks or anxiety. † However, it has never led to a single case of human death from overdose in its entire history. This is a sharp contrast to the high mortality rate of other drug like cocaine. Remember the side effect of marijuana are not bad at all compare to Codeine one of the most popular pain medication used in the U. S. I went into the official website of drugs. And I looked up the side effects of Codeine are: â€Å"slow heart rate, weak pulse, fainting, shallow breathing; feeling like you might pass out; confusion, agitation, hallucinations, unusual thoughts or behavior; feelings of extreme happiness or sadness; seizure (convulsions); Other side effects including withdrawal symptoms after either abrupt cessation or fast tapering of narcotic analgesics have been reported. These withdrawal symptoms have included agitation, restlessness, anxiety, insomnia, tremor, abdominal cramps, blurred vision, vomiting, and sweating  or problems with urination. Nonetheless, the use and cultivation of the cannabis plant was made illegal because of some antidrug advocates. Marijuana in this age is really controversial issue. Especially in politics this topic is on flame. For example; Washington State consider and pass a law calls I-502 to legalize tax and regulate marijuana. In the article â€Å"The Politics of Pot Legalization† Connor Guy expressed that â€Å"This would generate an estimated of $560 million in additional revenue per year. Similarly to the California’s Proposition 19 in 2010 that failed. † However, dispensary owners and medical marijuana lawyers did not support this law because they benefit from the system. The public support for I-502 was divided because of the legal penalties of driving under the influent of marijuana. They argue there is no an effective way of known if the person under the influent because marijuana can remain in the blood. Personally, I believe that the legalization in the use of marijuana in Washington open a door to discuss the possibility to change the legal statues of marijuana in the country. But, the politics have to articulate more in how the going to regulate the drug, and make more save for the public by giving hard sanction to the driver who drive under the influent of marijuana. The government will benefit on the legalization of marijuana by taxing stables places where marijuana can be properly sale and distribute. I think that politic for once can have a series discussion about legalizing marijuana. The legal state of marijuana is affecting millions of consumer in the United States that need this drug to go cope with medical, mental, and physical problem they have. Marijuana has been part of humanitys medicine since the history started to be recorded by people. The negative consequences of marijuana prohibition categories it as a â€Å"dangerous drug† because heavy marijuana users generally report lower life satisfaction, poorer mental and physical health, relationship problems, and less academic and career success compared to their peers who came from similar backgrounds. None of this problem is as tragic as the denial of medicinal cannabis to the tens of thousands of patients who could benefit from its therapeutic use to the sick and dying that need this drug. NIDAs studies show that â€Å"the benefits of using medical marijuana are grader than any smoking related harms that some patient may have. † For example, after conducting a nearly two-year review of the medical literature, investigators at the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine affirmed: Scientific data indicate the potential therapeutic value of cannabinoid drugs for pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation. Except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range tolerated for other medications. † The future of medical marijuana is uncertain. Society is change and the view of how society see this drug will change. I believe that in my life time marijuana will become legal again. Marijuana was a legal substance during the beginning of the twentieth century, and marijuana could legal again by this century. Also, many countries in the world like Brazil, Portugal, and the Netherlands have legalized marijuana. The U. S. is starting fallow those countries in legalizing marijuana. Voters in sixteen states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, and the District of Columbia have approved initiatives excusing patients who use marijuana under a physicians supervision. But people opposite the legalization marijuana are unpleased with the decision, they argue by making the drug legal more people may consume the drug. But this drug is as addicted as taking Tylenol for the paint. The legalization affect all society. However the prohibition of marijuana has not helped in the reduction of its consumption. In many cases, the consumption and production of marijuana has become wild, and out of control, even after it has been prohibited. As such, the drug become attractive to people. Also, some people argue that legalization of marijuana will help in allowing it to be consumed in a responsible way. â€Å"The US government has tried to use criminal penalties to reduce consumption of marijuana for over 75 years in vain. Today, the number of people consuming marijuana is estimated to be more than 25 million in the US. In fact, it is alleged that the largest cash crop in the US is cannabis sativa. † for that reason ridiculous to argue that prohibition of marijuana is a successful policy. Instead we should take a look to other society like some European countries had make laws less strict or repealed their laws, which were the drug become legal for recreational use. For example; Commander Brain Paddock in a neighborhood of London called Brixton, did a little experiment. â€Å"Over a six month period, he instructed his officers to warn those caught with small amounts of marijuana rather than arrest them. At the end of those six months, Scotland Yard issued a report that stated more than 2500 hours of manpower was saved by giving warnings (Katz, 2002). Not making arrests meant not spending valuable time transporting prisoners and filling out paper work, not to mention court time and costs saved prosecuting those arrested. That time could then be spent on investigating and enforcing other more serious criminal activities. † Legalization of marijuana may bring different social impacts in communities where it is legalized. For instance, it may unavoidably create a new industry in a challenging economy. Socially, people argue that legalization of marijuana may create good connection among the members of a given society. The effect of the drug may make conflicts with other members of the society due to the relaxing effect of marijuana (LdySnows Blog). Therefore, the society will benefit enrollment of marijuana smokers would boost the local economy as well. Also the drug may have impact negatively on the members of the society. In conclusion, I cannot argue which what might other people think, might say or think about medical marijuana. But, I believe the only solution is to regulated marijuana in market this way this drug can be control, and probably reduce the availability as well as the interest teens in Marijuana. On the street there are no ID checks, no regulation, and we can keep letting this drug be used with no control. In dispensaries medical marijuana could be manage and distribute under the control of the federal government. Knowing the history of the plant and the effect of smoking, or taking in an oral way may help people to have a better about why people want this drug to be legalize. Also, old politic has been one of the biggest challenge to overcome. Never less, the view of this drug need to change because of the medical aspect that this drug and the huge benefits this drug provide people that are in intensive pain. The future of this medical marijuana is a paradox. Because is better to leave it to the criminal justice system to keep enforcing the prohibition, or would we be better off with some form of controlled legalization or regulated market. The cost to our government by keeping this drug as illegal drug is very extensive. The only thing that sentence is leaving people with criminal records, be send to prisons, and the cost billions of dollars used to fight it. How exactly has criminalization of a plant benefited our society?