It's a dirty little secret that every year companies waste billions of dollars building products that never get to market. In most large consumer product companies, only about one in three products that are developed ever gets launched. Companies routinely spend $5 million to $10 million or more per product, keeping alive ideas that have no market potential.
Procter & Gamble (PG), for example, spent more than $500 million developing and building a manufacturing plant for Olestra, a new fat substitute designed to help people lose weight. Only after P&G made these investments did it test the product and discover that there wasn't a meaningful market for Olestra. In 2002, P&G sold its Olestra plant to Twin Rivers Technology at a substantial loss.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Stop Wasting Billions on Products That Flop - BusinessWeek
Author: Larry Popelka
