A recent Wall Street Journal article points to a resurgence of toilet manufacturing in the U.S. but it is mostly under foreign ownership (like the Japanese company, Toto). Mary Tripsas has a nice HBS case on Toto’s attempts at entering the U.S. market and the WSJ article seems a nice conclusion to the story. A broader question one might ask is why product innovation has not penetrated the U.S, market in this industry. In Japan, top end toilets are highly differentiated and even link to electronic devices like Android smartphones. As such, this might spur discussion of when innovations are likely to take hold as well as questions about entry into new markets. Nevertheless, this video reminds us that there may still be a need for low tech solutions in this market…

Contributed by Russ Coff