Innovation, corporate style

Four Innovation Lessons from Anheuser-Busch.
(Thanks to Lager Heads for the, well, heads up).

It’s popular to write that [fill in the name of a large brewing company] could replicate any beer in the world if it really wanted to. But could it? Would its corporate culture let it?

Think of any innovative beer you cherish popular beer of the moment (amended 2.13.2010 to make the conversation about beer rather than marketing terms) — last weekend it might have been Pliny The Younger, this weekend Red Poppy 2010. Think these beers are a result of a “team” getting together, a bunch of test batches, focus groups, middle managers and upper managers signing off on everything?

Or one person, could be a single crazy and could be a few like-minded we-work-together collaborators, saying screwitthiswillbegreat?

 

 

When American hops sucked . . .

The United States became a net exporter of hops in the 1870s, so somebody must have liked varieties grown in America. In fact, exactly 100 years ago the U.S. exported 10.5 million pounds of hops and imported 3.2 million. Eighty percent of the exports went to England, while almost all the imports came from Germany and Austria-Hungary (thus Bohemia, where Saaz hops were grown).

Yet consider this from article in The Edinburgh Review from 1862, only a few years before the U.S. began exporting more hops than it imported:

“American hops may also be dismissed in a few words. Like American grapes, they derive a course, rank flavour and smell from the soil in which they grow, which no management, however careful, has hitherto succeeded in neutralising. There is little chance in their competing in our market with European growth, except in season of scarcity and of unusually high prices.”

Think how you’d feel if you were a grower and read that at Rate Hops or Hop Advocate?

12% craft beer gain? Is that possible?

In still another story about gloomy beer sales that focuses on the largest brewers BusinessWeek provides this eye-opening number:

“One segment of the beer industry that has resisted the recession is craft breweries, increasingly popular for flavorful beers made in smaller batches. According to data from the Nielsen Co., craft or microbrew sales rose 12.4% in 2009.”

Nielsen also reports that craft beers now account for 5.8 percent of the overall beer market.

Granted, Nielsen and the Brewers Association define “craft beer” in different ways (the BA is more exclusive) but a gain of more than 12 percent for 2009 would be stunning. The Wall Street Journal has reported Boston Beer production was up 1.6 percent in 2009, and we know traditionally total craft sales seldom differ much from Samuel Adams (in no small part because Sam Adams accounts for more than one bottle sold out of every five). In 2008 the category was up 6 percent, Boston Beer 6 percent. In 2007, Boston Beer 14 percent and “craft” 12 percent. You get the idea.

Additionally, at mid-year the Brewers Association reported “craft” gains of 5 percent for the first six months. It would take one heck of a second half to hit 12 percent.