SCI/Chemical Heritage Foundation Innovation Day
21 September 2006, Philadelphia, USA
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| After dinner speaker Keith Grime, Proctor & Gamble |
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Closing Plenary Panel (From left to right): Madeleine Jacobs, Executive Director and CEO, American Chemical Society; Frankie Wood-Black, Director of Consent Decree Compliance, ConocoPhillips; Klaus Heinzelbecker, Director of Strategic Projects, BASF; Cyrus Mody, Program Manager of Nanotechnology and Innovation Studies, Chemical Heritage Foundation.
(photos: CHF, photographer Douglas Lockard) |
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Forward thinkers in the US
chemical industry came to
Philadelphia's old city area for the
Chemical Heritage Foundation and
SCI's Third annual innovation day on 21
September 2006.
The conference comprised plenary
lectures and parallel breakout
sessions discussing topics that reflect
the scope of the industry and
the potential for innovation. These
included biofuels and renewable
feedstocks, sustainable chemistry
and engineering, materials for electronics
and health, and issues surrounding
global water needs.
The main theme of 'Innovation
and how to do it better' was addressed
by plenary speakers: Keith
Grime, Procter & Gamble's vice
president for corporate R&D, who
described P&G's policy of open innovation;
Sarah Kaplan from the
University of Pennsylvania's Wharton
Business School; and Klaus
Heinzelbecker, BASF's director of
scenario planning.
Grime described P&G's need to
generate incremental business worth
$4m annually to meet shareholder
expectations. To accelerate and diversify
the flow of innovations, P&G has
realised that it must expand its horizons
and look outside the company
for new ideas. Grime explained how
the concept of extending R&D to C&D
- connect and develop - has been so
successful that P&G now aims for
50% of new leads to come from external
connections.
| Of 1917’s top 100 US companies listed in Forbes magazine, only 15 remain in the top 100 today. |
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Kaplan co-authored the best-selling
business book Creative Destruction.
She noted that of 1917's top 100 US
companies listed in the first edition
of Forbes business magazine, only
15 remain in the top 100 today. Even
consistently successful companies
only tend to perform around the
norm for their industry sector, she
said. What really shakes-up sectors
is the arrival of new entrants with
disruptive innovations that re-shape
markets or create entirely new ones,
she added.
Heinzelbecker explained BASF's
systematic approach to innovation
through foresighting tools, horizon
scanning and trends analysis, including
scenario planning.
Alan Baylis,
SCI Business Strategy Group
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