Collaboration between various departments has grown to be a key element in new product development. In fact, such a cooperative spirit has clearly been vital to the successes of our past two award recipients—H.J. Heinz, this year's New Products Company of the Year, and Kraft, our 2001 Processor of the Year.
Principals at Heinz report that group efforts have led to many of their most successful introductions over the past few years. That collaboration is not only in-house between the various divisions at the company, but also with their customers, consumers and suppliers.