Electric starter for cars
Walmart partners - P&G, Colgate Palmolive
Exploding Coupons
To begin with, the innovations talked about in the book are not brand new like introducing an automobile, diaper or pharmaceutical drugs into the market but more about their easy adoption ad solutions to problems along, like an electric starter instead of a dangerous crank for a car, a diaper that glows in the dark, so kids dont have to be disturbed from their sleep, ways of making sure that the patients actually take the tablets. These alterations increase the value of a product, but the companies cannot increase the price way too much than they began with unless it is an earth shattering invention. Once we have that cleared, its easier to appreciate the book for its emphasis on quick experimentation instead of a blanket change of products all around the globe. In companies with fast turn around time requiremnt, the engineers are not left with the luxury of testing something, always trying to beat the competitor by bringing the actual modified product into the market.
The author mostly deals with fast paced companies like Amazon and Google that are required to come up with results faster than in quantity.
In the Fruit-Roll ups production line breakdown, when a statistician brought chemists, production engineers and line operators into a room to find solution o the problem. It brought home the idea of importance of TWI (Training within industry).
The author wants to show instrumentation engineering as the de facto route to success, but every experiment begins with an idea. Its the scope of the idea implementation that can save companies losses. Evident from the battered examples of Blockbuster, Netflix, it doesnt hurt to run some quick sanity check on your next moves.
Firestone crisis