Word: product
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...Management, a restaurant and resort firm in Kenya and South Africa. "There's a chain of services that depend on our industry." Lipman of the UNWTO agrees. "Tourism is a good development agent because poor countries don't have to manufacture it," he says. Developing nations already have their product - nature, culture, tradition - and all that's required to profit is a bit of investment in infrastructure and Internet marketing. "The market comes to these countries, then wanders around depositing foreign-exchange income wherever it's directed, including poor rural areas," Lipman says. That's a handsome return on investment...
...product finding a niche in the U.S. is a line of insulated bento boxes with stackable lunch compartments, called Mr. Bento, that Zojirushi sells as an alternative to standard American lunch boxes. The bento boxes are designed to make it easy to take both hot and cold foods to work without having to rely on a microwave. The company also sells some 90,000 electric air pots to U.S. consumers each year. Sales of the air pots - which heat water at blazing speeds - have jumped 50% over the past three years as Zojirushi has expanded partnerships with gourmet retailers...
That means avoiding commodity battles with rivals like Panasonic and Braun. Zojirushi briefly made dual-mug coffeepots, but when engineers couldn't sufficiently differentiate its product from other brands', the company abandoned the market. The focus now is on products that take advantage of Zojirushi's expertise in heat conduction and insulation. One recent hit in Japan is the "i-Pot," aimed at elderly tea drinkers. It sends an e-mail message to family members whenever the pot is used, so they can remotely confirm that an aged relative is up and about...
With clever gizmos like that one, Zojirushi has fashioned itself as the Nintendo of kitchen gadgetry. Both companies have crushed much larger competitors in narrow markets where their engineering talent has yielded marketable product improvements. And both have remained lean - with about 5,000 employees between them and small, stable management teams. Both have leaned heavily on slick industrial design. And just as Nintendo has become hip again with its underdog approach to video-game design, Zojirushi has been brewing up its own cult following with its sleekly crafted gizmos...
Still, the army is reluctant to launch an all-out campaign against the militants, not least because of a widely held perception in Pakistan that the Taliban's rise is a product of America's unpopular war in Afghanistan. There's little support in the public - or within the ranks of the military - for deploying the military in a sustained civil war against the militants. Many in Pakistan were convinced that the Taliban had exceeded their bounds in Buner and Swat and needed to be pushed back - but not necessarily crushed. Whereas U.S. officials warn of the Taliban...