New products are a notoriously risky proposition, Mark Dziersk,vp/ Design at Brandimage-Desgrippes & Laga, points out in his "Design Finds You" blog for Fast Company, but he offers six tips for improving the odds of success. Some are obvious: If you overpromise and oversell, the viral Internet will catch up with you, for instance. Watch out for side effects. "Take a popular kids' drink, concentrate it, put it into a squeeze bottle, squeeze it into a glass of water and POW! Instant drink," he writes. But it can also turn into sticky, gooey ammunition in the squirt gun of a …

Further blurring the line between commerce and content, a special section of Target.com called Red Hot Shop will feature articles from DailyCandy, an email newsletter and Web site owned by cable operator Comcast that covers fashion and culture, Emily Steel reports. DailyCandy's "unique and quirky writing style is something they are known for, and we want Red Hot Shop to have a larger focus on editorial, compared to the rest of Target.com," says spokeswomen Kelly Basgen. Target is joining companies such as Travelocity and Johnson & Johnson that are adding more entertainment and …

Brent Snavely says Ford not only has to wisely manage the $21.3 billion in cash it holds in reserve but also has to find a way to hold onto the market share it has gained recently without getting sucked into a pricing war as GM and Chrysler dealers step into going-out-of-business mode. Part of Ford's increasing share can be attributed to the popularity of its new models, but some customers say they like the fact that Ford isn't borrowing federal funds. Ford says that it can survive without federal loans as long as industry sales don't drop below 9.2 …

MillerCoors' president and chief commercial officer thinks that this may be the most opportune time in two decades for insurgent brands to make inroads against category leaders, Jenny Wiggins reports. "People are reconsidering their purchases," according to MillerCoor's Tom Long. And that means that his beers are right where they want to be against AB InBev's Bud and Bud Light. "They are big brands without a razor sharp position," Long says. MillerCoors was formed after SABMiller merged its U.S. operations with Molson Coors a year ago, giving it 30% of the market. AB InBev, however, controls half the market, …

In a book that's sure to be controversial among free-market advocates, two academics argue that government regulation has led to the success of the IT industry in the U.S. As examples, Peter Cowhey of the University of California, San Diego (who recently joined the Obama administration) and Jonathan Aronson of the University of Southern California, point to the feds breaking up AT&T and forcing IBM to separate its hardware and software businesses. Fragmenting these industries helps common standards to emerge, according to the book, Transforming Global Information and Communication Markets. This, in turn, allows businesses to …

As expected, General Motors filed for bankruptcy this morning in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. It hopes for a quick sale process that would allow a much smaller company to emerge from court protection in as little as 60 to 90 days. A bankruptcy judge, meanwhile, approved the sale Sunday of most of Chrysler's assets to a group led by Italy's Fiat SpA. "The immediate implication is that the companies are going to get smaller and so market share is up for grabs, which means that rivals like Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai are going …