Export This!

Companies have done their best to capitalize on the Olympics, whether via serving as an official sponsor or posing as one, amping up brand image, signing up stars or pushing new products. A high-level PepsiCo Food manager recently revealed to me a locally developed snack set for a post-Olympic China release. She gave me a taste test too. “It’s so good,” she said, “that we’re even thinking export.” It could work with that product (anything crunchy with lime and salt is a good thing), but in regards to R&D in China, export is not generally the primary aim. Instead, most companies innovating here naturally target the massively growing market right outside their research centers. So if MNCs, or indeed Chinese companies, were interested in innovating products for export to worldwide markets, where might they begin? I don’t have the answer for that, but not to be entirely unhelpful, here is a list of popular Chinese produc...