Interesante articulo de la revista BW, aqui teneis un extracto del mismo, para el articulo completo pincha aqui
MARTINI MEETINGS
To spark innovation, the company also has reworked its development process. One of the first changes: a regularly scheduled session called a martini meeting that, Goldner is quick to explain, is named for the shape of the traditional martini glass rather than the drink itself. Researchers start at the rim by looking for emerging technologies and new inventions. These are then winnowed down to the most promising. When ideas reach the metaphorical stem, Hasbro has a sense of how the new technology could be applied to its toy and games.
FurReal Friends, a line of soft animal toys with robotic innards, came out of the martini process. At the rim were advances in animatronics, the field that had given movies and theme parks the ability to create animal puppets with lifelike movements. Next, «the head of engineering came to a meeting with a new idea for animatronic plush toys,» says Goldner. That led to the girl-targeted toy brand, which launched in 2002 and was the hard-to-get toy that season. FurReal Friends is now sold in more than 60 countries.
Another of the more recent Hasbro brands is BeyBlades, a line of spinning tops, licensed from Japanese manufacturer Tanaka and introduced in 2002, that earned the Toy of the Year award from Britain’s Toy Marketers Assn. two years in a row. Such brands are years away from movie or game tie-ins, but Goldner knows that Hasbro can’t rely on Transformers and G.I. Joe forever.