The folks at Vlasic Pickles, a popular brand of all kinds of pick- les, decided there was a market for large pickle slices. Pickles, of course, are made from brining cucumbers. The problem was, in order to get large slices, they needed large cucumbers, which didn't exist at the time. So Vlasic had to first come up with large cucumbers. Think Botany 101. They crossed a variety of cucumber types, and then had to wait about 10 weeks, the time needed for the cucumber plants to mature, to see what developed. After several attempts, they finally developed a strain of large cucumbers. But those cucumbers didn't taste quite right, so it was back to the drawing board, or, in this case, more crossing of different cucumber varie- ties, and then waiting another 10 weeks for the results. Eventually, they got it right: large cucumbers that had the taste they wanted. End of story? Not quite. The pickle-slicing equipment in the fac- tory wasn't able to handle the large pickles, and it broke down when trying to slice the larger pickles. That meant that new equipment had to be designed and installed that was able to slice the large pickles. Questions 1. What are some reasons consumers would be interested in large pickle slices? Name two reasons. 2. What lesson about new product development does this story tell?