Nielsen announced yesterday its twelve Breakthrough Innovation Winners for 2015. Among the twelve winners, four beverage products made the list this year: Monster Energy Co.’s Monster Energy Ultra, PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew Kickstart, MillerCoors’ Redd’s Apple Ale and Red Bull GmbH’s Red Bull Editions line.

 “Breakthrough Innovation winners resolve circumstances of struggle in consumers’ lives and fulfil unmet desires,” said Rob Wengel, senior vice president of innovation at New York-based Nielsen, in a statement. “Today, consistently successful innovation outcomes are not a pipedream but a choice available to innovation leaders. We don’t know who will win these awards in the future, but we know what they need to do in order to win in this dynamic and highly competitive market.”

Creating game-changing innovation is challenging, and turning innovation into sales is that much harder, Nielsen notes. The Breakthrough Innovation Project and Award celebrates this triumph by highlighting companies that are changing category dynamics. To identify these winners, Nielsen studied 3,522 consumer product introductions in 2013 to determine which products had truly breakthrough outcomes in their categories. This year, only twelve met the Nielsen requirements for distinctiveness, relevance and endurance to earn the top spot. Specifically, winners must deliver a new value proposition to the market, have significant relevance by generating a minimum of $50 million in year-one U.S. sales and have the ability to endure the market, demonstrated by achieving at least 90 percent of its first-year sales in year two.

The comprehensive Breakthrough Innovation Report, with case studies for selected winners that detail their approach and how they applied the science of innovation successfully, will be released June 22-24 at Nielsen’s Consumer 360 event in Washington, D.C.

“One of the most exciting discoveries of the Breakthrough Innovation Project is to reveal and validate the casual mechanisms of innovation success,  the science of innovation,” said Taddy Hall, senior vice president of the Breakthrough Innovation Project at Nielsen, in a statement. “The same fundamental factors persist through all of Nielsen’s Breakthrough Winners and distinguishes them from their less successful peers.”

The complete list of winners includes:

•              L’Oreal Paris’ Advanced Haircare

•              Atkins Nutritionals’ Atkins Frozen Meals

•              Procter & Gamble’s Duracell Quantum

•              Kraft Foods Group Inc.’s Lunchables Uploaded

•              Monster Energy Co.’s Monster Energy Ultra

•              PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew Kickstart

•              PepsiCo’s Müller Yogurt

•              MillerCoor’s Redd’s Apple Ale

•              Kellogg’s Special K Flatbread Breakfast Sandwiches

•              Red Bull GmbH’s The Red Bull Editions line

•              Nestlé Purina’s Tidy Cats LightWeight

 •              PepsiCo’s Tostitos Cantina Tortilla Chips and Salsa