36 InnoVAtIon MAnAGeMent elements39 Issue 2|2012 Identifying and developing new markets In the Coatings & Additives Business Unit, the New Business Development Functional Unit generates additional, sustainable business beyond the existing business areas.
Left: One rapidly growing market that Coatings & Additives is working on in the new Business Development Functional Unit is additive manufacturing. this allows the layered construction of complex 3D structures and components that are not possible or prohibitively expensive to produce by other methods right: How can we permanently protect the touch screens of tablet PCs and smartphones against unsightly scratches or fingerprints? How do we achieve a refined surface reflection that also allows the screen to be read easily? In the new Business Development Functional Unit of the Coatings & Additives Business Unit, evonik looks for innovative answers theRe Was a time when innovation was driven purely by technology. In those days, advancements in the broad R&D subject areas had a direct impact on a company’s business activities. Today, this putative causal chain from technological innovation to entrepreneurial success is not exactly broken, but it has become increasingly difficult for companies to continue growing in established markets based on individual technological innovations or an inventor’s flash of genius. “Now, innovations are often created by developers splicing together existing technologies, and thus offering new applications to satisfy market demands that have existed for a relatively short time,” says Dr. Stephan Fengler, Vice President of the New Business Development Functional Unit in the Coatings & Additives Business Unit at <strong>Evonik</strong> <strong>Industries</strong>. Such products as electronic devices with touchsensitive screens have created new needs that can be met by coatings. Before Apple’s iPhone became a smashing success, such devices existed only in certain niche markets. A growing number of users regularly use their smartphone now to send e-mail, manage appointments, shop online, and download apps, so scratches, reflections, and fingerprints on touch screens are unwelcome on an application associated in this way with design and lifestyle. Since it is a common problem, producers of smartphones and tablet PCs have suddenly become interested in finding an inexpensive, functional coating for the glossy displays. InnoVAtIon MAnAGeMent The example of the touch screen reveals how embedded future innovations can be: Innovations outside the core activities of Coatings & Additives that could mean real additional business for <strong>Evonik</strong>. Identifying and promoting this growth potential is the work of New Business Development, which is headed by Fengler and located in Darmstadt and Marl. “We explore what kinds of needs new technologies are creating on the market.” So the task of New Business Development, in association with the business unit’s Innovation Management unit, is not to figure out how to generate additional sales with individual products from the business lines, but to adopt a mindset that goes beyond business lines and is firmly rooted in innovation. New technologies generate new needs Naturally, this kind of approach succeeds only if it is designed for the intermediate to long term. “It calls for new partnerships, new partners,” says Fengler. “And this is why it’s so hard to reconcile with day-today business.” The New Business Development Functional Unit has been a part of Coatings & Additives since 2006. Over that time, its team has grown. But it has no laboratory of its own—instead, it works in close cooperation with the business lines of the business unit. The team also stays in close contact with corporate R&D, which <strong>Evonik</strong> pools in its strategic development unit Creavis, and with other business units. “New Business Development also seizes upon ideas outside the business lines and co-finances projects that, for example, are designed to run for several years and take on the kind of risk that a business line can’t assume by itself,” says Fengler. New Business Development, then, is by no means a kind of extended workbench of the business lines. Rather, it is a strategically important component of Coatings & Additives, which is investing considerable assets in the unit. The management team of the business unit manages its activities. Coatings & Additives is at home in the world of the paints, coatings, and printing inks and in the adhesives and sealing compounds industries. The business unit also develops custom-made functional polymers for lubricant applications. These product groups include crosslinkers such as expoxide resin curing agents, and crosslinkers for powdered coatings, 333 37 elements39 Issue 2|2012
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