In Houston Saturday night to speak to the sales team at DePuySpine, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. Wow! Seventy percent of their burgeoning sales are from products introduced in the last three years! R&D up 50 percent in the last couple of years! Moreover, their array of products are mind-boggling game-changers in the world of wonky backs—an especially big deal with 80 million bad-back Boomers as their future market. Once again, their brashness & wholesale commitment to innovation was a welcome pick-me-up after P&G&G. (NB: Anyone but me wonder if the Pats’ Gillette Stadium will be renamed Charmin Field?)
J&J has made some big acquisitions, to be sure, but it remains the antithesis of P&G. Their Cultural Commitment to Decentralization, that Bob Waterman and I loved when we put the firm in In Search of Excellence, is still very much alive & well. Bravo! (And no mean feat!)