Dr Robert W Gore accepts 2005 Perkin Medal at Philadelphia dinner
Gore-tex® developed after collaboration, he explains in acceptance speech
 It is indeed an honour to receive this award, both personally and on behalf of my many Associates at Gore, who have all contributed to our success. And especially in recognition of my father and mother who founded our company in 1958, in the basement of our home.
When we started our company we had two great ideas. The first was to focus on the promising field of fluoropolymers, the other was to structure our new company in a way that would give those who joined us the maximum freedom to grow and innovate. Through the years we have found that both of these ideas have served us well, and continue to do so today.
We try to keep both our philosophy and our practices as simple as we can. For example, one of our basic principles is fairness, to TRY to be fair, to try to be fair to each other, to our suppliers, to our community and to our customers. As you might guess, this simple principle often leads to intensive discussion among us as we try to apply it to specific situations. But this discussion is exactly what we want.
Another of our principles is freedom, freedom to grow personally as well as to be free to reach out, to innovate and be responsive to business opportunities. When it comes to organisational structure, we try to lean more on the side of too little formal structure rather than too much.
Such simple principles may have much to do with our being selected as one of the top 100 companies to work for in America. We have made the list consistently since 1984, when it was first compiled in a book. And we are proud to be one of only a handful of companies who have been listed every time. The list is now published annually by Fortune Magazine.
The concept of ‘enterprise’ is important to us. Every business corporation is not necessarily a business enterprise. Enterprises purposefully venture into the unknown: in our case into new products and new markets.
| When people have the tools, the training and the support they need, combined with the freedom and encouragement to find their own solutions, they find the energy, enthusiasm and creativity to get the job done |
Within our company we encourage each person to develop the spirit of enterprise. As a result we have many entrepreneurial individuals and teams. You may know us as the makers of Gore-Tex® fabric, used in outerwear for skiing, backpacking, golf and other outdoor activities. However, you may not know that we make high tech products like components for computers, (which was our first product), artificial arteries (which have been implanted in well over a million patients) and even specialty guitar strings and sewing thread. And we do also supply some of the essential but less glamorous products for our chemical industry….to keep the pipes, pumps and reactors from leaking.
It all adds up to more than we ever expected at the start. And we did not do it alone. Some of you here tonight represent corporations who greatly aided us.
For just one example, in conjunction with the Gore-Tex® technology we needed modification of the basic starting material, which was a polymer. This polymer is composed of molecules that are very long. Let me give you an idea of how long. If we magnified the molecule to a size that we could actually see, so it had a diameter the size of a hair, it would be more than 40 feet long.
Imagine if the hair on my head was 40 ft long! Imagine how it could tangle! And in its usual state, the molecules of this polymer are tangled. What we needed was material where these molecules would be even longer, and at the same time lie together in nearly perfect order, much like well-combed hair.
Through collaborative efforts, a few of the great chemical companies were able to do just that for us. I could give many more examples of the help that other organisations and institutions lent to our efforts.
Over half our shipments are to customers outside the United States. Early on, in the 1960s, we set up manufacturing sites at several locations in Europe and Asia . At first these were pioneering outposts, set up to manufacture all our products for sale to their local markets. More recently they have been transformed into specialty plants, each of which supplies specific products globally.
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| Ronald Egres, winner of the SCI Perkin Scholarship awarded to a
student in a graduate or doctoral programme in
applied chemistry, or related sciences, pictured left with Dr Gore |
Our business culture seems to work well outside the US . This past year our Scottish operation was voted the best place to work in the United Kingdom .
As we have grown, we have been able to fund our growth internally out of earnings. So we are still a private company and intend to remain so. And while a large block of stock is still owned within the Gore family, yet every single one of the 7,000 Associates who work with us worldwide also owns stock through our Associate Stock Option Plan, to which our company contributes a hefty 12% of each person’s salary annually.
In retrospect, one thing I have learned over the years is that when people have the tools, the training and the support they need, and it is combined with the freedom and encouragement to find their own solutions, they find the energy, enthusiasm and creativity to get the job done, to get results.
I suspect that many of you here tonight have experienced the same thing in your own organisations.
Finally, I want to thank you again for this recognition and award. It is nice to be recognised by one’s colleagues. I wish each of you continued success during the coming year.
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