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Article that discusses the importance for companies to couple innovation strategy with the core values of their brands.

An article on competition in the smartphone industry. Nokia is the market leader thanks to its brand and grip on the Symbian OS, but competitors like Apple and RIM are growing quickly thanks to superior product concepts. It is interesting that Nokia is teaming up with Microsoft in the area of Office applications, in order to increase the appeal of its products.

Innovation leads to imitation. This is especially true for inventions that are somewhat easy to copy, like Nestlé's Nespresso capsules. It is interesting that, to ward off price-based competition, Nestlé has chosen to keep firm in its positioning of Nespresso as a high-end and "affordable luxury" offering. This requires accurate branding, advertising, complementary services, and so on. Of course, some enforcement of its  1700 patents might also come in handy

Today, Yahoo! and Nokia, announced a worldwide strategic alliance to extend the reach of their industry leading online services and offer people rich experiences that keep them connected to their world and the world around them. Building on more than five years of collaboration, Nokia and Yahoo! will leverage each others' strengths in e-mail, instant messaging and maps and navigation services, to provide consumers with access to world-class experiences on both PC and mobile devices. As part of the alliance: Nokia will be the exclusive, global provider of Yahoo!'s maps and navigation services, integrating Ovi Maps across Yahoo! properties, branded as "powered by Ovi." Yahoo! will become the exclusive, global provider of Nokia's Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services branded as "Ovi Mail / Ovi Chat powered by Yahoo!" Nokia and Yahoo! plan to work on ID federation between their services, beginning by making it easy for people to use their Ovi user IDs across select Yahoo! properties to easily access the online content and services they need.

Few people have heard of Zune, the audio-video entertainment brand that Microsoft built in order to challenge Apple's iPod. Microsoft is now stepping up the challenge. Will its standard, based on interoperability between devices (Zune player, PCs/smartphones and Xbox consoles), be able to increase its market share from it's current and paltry 2%? Seems like a desperate attempt, but Microsoft has done it already in the past

Daimler and BYD (China) plan to establish a development center to combine the German automaker's expertise in automotive engineering with BYD's battery and low-cost production know-how. The companies aim to create a new brand for the vehicle that will be positioned between BYD and Mercedes models. Development time may take about three years. Daimler said last month it will focus on cleaner technologies to take global market share from rivals BMW and Audi.

The story of Zai, makers of luxury ski equipment, is interesting and typical of firms who plan to work on a differentiation strategy and carve themselves a niche with little competition, at the same time solving technical tradeoffs in a different way than done by "traditional" competitors

BusinessWeek has compiled its annual list of the most innovative companies in the world and, as in 2009, winning is just Apple. This ranking takes into account several parameters, including innovation capacity of a company, but also the sales of the previous three years, increasing the profit margin and value of the stock market. Apple is thus confirmed as the company invests more in innovation and produces all products "revolutionary". Followed by Google and Microsoft in second place for the first time on the podium. The only Italian company Fiat is present in the Top50, which ranks at 43 th place.

In an interview with PC Pro, the deputy president of Sony's VAIO Business Group, Ryosuke Akahane, has revealed that the company will soon be effectively splitting its laptop business into two distinct groups. The first, called "division one," will continue with laptops designed and built by Sony as before, but the second, or "division two," will rely on laptops built by other manufacturers. Those behind-the-scenes changes may not be readily apparent to consumers, however, as the so-called division two laptops will still carry the VAIO name, and will apparently have the same "taste of VAIO" and "style of VAIO," with Sony naturally first approving all third-party designs. "We need a certain market share. And if we don't have a certain market share, it's tough to survive"

Fino a qualche anno fa Toyota voleva creare un brand Prius con il quale vendere una nuova faliglia di auto ibride, mentre ora sembra aver cambiato in parte idea: è ancora convinta a voler ampliare la proposta di vetture ibride, ma sempre con il suo marchio. Il prossimo anno dovrebbe infatti debuttare sul mercato un mpv basato sul pianale della famosa berlina giapponese, sempre con un motore ibrido. Sulla medesima piattaforma verrà in seguito sviluppata la versione ibrida del suv RAV4.

Product liability issues are always quite tricky for companies. Even though child buggies are not really high-tech products, and safety problems should not come out unexpected, even established companies often mismanage the process.