Built to Innovate: Essential Practices to Wire Innovation into Your Company’s DNA

9

IGNITING THE ENGINE

CREATING A GOVERNANCE AND COORDINATION STRUCTURE FOR THE INNOVATING ENGINE

If you were playing a word association game, the top response to “Bayer” would be inevitable—“aspirin.” The 150-year-old company is best known for its development and marketing of acetylsalicylic acid, the miracle drug developed by Bayer chemists in the 1890s and originally trademarked worldwide as aspirin. But though aspirin is still a mainstay of Bayer’s business, the $40 billion company also profits from a steady stream of innovations in pharmacology and the life sciences: for example, technologies that help smallholder farmers in developing countries expand their production of sustainable crops; artificial intelligence (AI) software designed ...