Nielsen Names Breakthrough Innovation Award Winners

Nielsen has named its 12 Breakthrough Innovation Award winners for 2015. The winners are:

“Breakthrough Innovation winners resolve circumstances of struggle in consumers’ lives and fulfil unmet desires,” says Rob Wengel, senior vice president, Innovation at Nielsen. “Today, consistently successful innovation outcomes are not a pipedream but a choice available to innovation leaders. We don’t know who will win these awards in the future, but we know what they need to do in order to win in this dynamic and highly competitive market.” Creating game-changing innovation is challenging and turning innovation into enduring sales is that much harder. The Breakthrough Innovation Project and Award celebrates this exceptional triumph by companies that are changing category dynamics, not just conforming to them. Nielsen studied 3,522 consumer product introductions in 2013 to determine which products had truly breakthrough outcomes in their categories. This year, only 12 met the Nielsen requirements for distinctiveness, relevance and endurance to earn the top spot. The comprehensive Breakthrough Innovation Report with case studies for selected winners that detail their approach and how they applied the science of innovation successfully, will be launched June 22-24 at Nielsen’s Consumer 360 event in Washington, D.C. “One of the most exciting discoveries of the Breakthrough Innovation Project is to reveal and validate the casual mechanisms of innovation success; the science of innovation,” says Taddy Hall, senior vice president, Breakthrough Innovation Project at Nielsen. “The same fundamental factors persist through all of Nielsen’s Breakthrough Winners and distinguishes them from their less successful peers.” The U.S. Nielsen Breakthrough Innovation Project is a long term in-depth analysis of more than 20,000 product launches over six years. The project has celebrated 74 top products, representing less than 0.5% of new product launches, since its inception in 2008. The findings and winner spotlights are featured in the Breakthrough Innovation Report, which is published yearly and launched at Nielsen’s Consumer 360 event in June. Champions in the report must satisfy three requirements in order to qualify for the award. Each product is required to be distinctive and deliver a new value proposition to the market. Succeeding products must have significant relevance by generating a minimum of $50 million in year one U.S. sales. The ability to endure the market demonstrated by achieving at least 90% of year-one sales in year two is the final condition for all companies vying for a winning place.