“A company must be competitive and must have the ability to innovate.†Dozens of R&D executives from American Chemicals are convinced that the chemical industry has great potential for innovation.
At present, for the chemical industry, some people think that it is difficult for the industry to have many innovative products and few innovative processes. There are also people who think of R&D as an unnecessary expense for the company to reduce dividends to shareholders. Business; even some researchers believe that embarking on the road to career success should be achieved through increased sales rather than research and development. However, these one-sided views on the innovation activities in the chemical industry cannot reduce the enormous role it plays in the growth of the company. At the seminar, the consensus of the delegates was that innovation is the most important source of value creation.
Representatives of Air Products Chemicals believe that innovation is undoubtedly the most closely linked to the creation of value, whether new products, new processes or services. In order to achieve innovative results, Air Products has a technical manager position in the business management team to ensure that business needs and technical capabilities match. At present, the company's annual research and development expenses account for about 2% of sales. In order to effectively increase the utilization rate of the company's limited resources, the company often introduces applicable technologies from joint ventures and partners and collaborates with related institutions to develop new technologies. Because it is impossible for a company to invent everything, it is unrealistic to lead in every technical field.
Chemical companies generally believe that the use of network technology platforms such as InnoCentive and NineSigma is also a good choice. The former is to publish relevant technological problems on the Internet and seek solutions; the latter is for certain types of problems, lists the list of available partners, and plays a role as a bridge for science and technology.
According to Weskamp, ​​a representative of McKinsey Consulting, innovation for the chemical industry means transforming information learned in the market into concrete scientific and technological solutions. In response to the lack of work enthusiasm for some R&D personnel in the chemical industry, he expressed concern. Especially in some countries, this phenomenon is more obvious. Those technically trained staff are not willing to be engaged in R&D. They all hope to be able to switch to sales as soon as possible.
The vice president of science and technology of PPG Industrial Company pointed out that part of the reason for this phenomenon is that at present, many companies’ business management teams are no longer dominated by technology-savvy people. Most financial experts are managing the business. For them, innovation is something that is very difficult to control. 'It is simply not enough to cut costs and reduce capital costs. A company must be competitive and must have innovative capabilities'. If a company wants to expand its business and introduce new products to the market, it must allow top management to support and value technological innovation activities.
President of Tiger Scientific, W. R. Former Chief Technology Officer of Grace Corporation F. PeterBoer pointed out that many CEOs regard R & D business as a costly thing, but this is not the case. If a company can select projects with potential benefits for R&D and continue to introduce promising products to the market, then the company will be able to minimize risks in the future and obtain maximum benefits from R&D investment.
Connelly, a representative of DuPont, said: 'Innovation is not the same as invention. Integrating existing technologies to create value is also innovation'. He believes that DuPont has always relied on well-defined management procedures such as the Six Sigma quality assurance system to manage the company's R&D process. 'Of course, there are times when we need to put aside some of the so-called rules. The essence of R&D management is to know when it is time to emancipate people's minds and when they need to bring their minds back to reality. 'Innovation for Rohm and Haas is to improve some parts of the existing technology. Of course, the company also carries out the development of new technologies, which are often risky, but success will have greater returns.
Celanese’s representative suggested that companies should also pay attention to the pursuit of perfect personality compromises for scientists in innovative activities, and should introduce innovative products to customers in due course. This should be learned from the head of Microsoft company Bill Gates. Although Microsoft's Windows operating system has loopholes, it is because of the timely launch of Microsoft's continuous innovation and upgrading of the system, it only attracted users to continue to purchase its products.