INNOVATION: "How P&G Plans To Clean Up: CEO A.G. Lafley is fully focused on pushing growth even as markets are shrinking around the globe," interview with Roger O. Crockett, BusinessWeek, 13 April 2009.

The company is one of the great innovators in American business history, and thus is naturally a company to watch in the current situation.

American companies are not letting up on R&D, having learned the lesson in past downturns that a lot of great products tend to emerge and separate winners from losers in the follow-on boom.

P&G, under its current CEO, seems especially committed in this regard to developing new products for the bottom of the economic pyramid, where most of the corp's best growth has been recorded in recent years.