Why Some Think P&G's Innovation Is Slipping | Jack Neff - Advertising Age
Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 11:17AM Tucked in an area north of Cincinnati is an office-warehouse building that looks like a movie set. It contains fully functional mockups of two homes (one upper-middle class, one lower-income) complete with kitchens, bathrooms and laundry rooms. It has two mock grocery stores and a virtual-reality lab where you can fly over store shelves. And, just like a front operation in a spy thriller, the complex is innocuously called BRI Research -- to avoid letting consumers know that they're involved in studies for Procter & Gamble. This is the Beckett Ridge Innovation Center, or BRIC, in P&G parlance. And P&G, whose innovation record has come under growing scrutiny, hopes it can deliver. Analysts and investors are decidedly unimpressed with P&G these days.