The European Business Review May/June 2021

It was a remarkable moment back in 2018 when Merck, a vibrant science and technology company, celebrated its 350th anniversary. At the Curious2018 – Future Insight Conference in July 2018, Merck announced a new research prize comprising up to €1 million per year, which is planned to be awarded for the next 35 years to honour and enable groundbreaking research in areas of high need for humanity, such as health, nutrition and energy. And on that day, a Tuesday, 17 July 2018, it was announced that the theme of the first prize was in a high-need area called “pandemic preparedness”. Who would have known that only 17 months later, a coronavirus would jump species barriers and form the worst pandemic that humanity has experienced since the flu pandemic a hundred…

Ulrich A.K. Betz, Vice President of Innovation Merck, is responsible for innovation management and strategic academic collaborations at Merck. He is an accomplished R&D manager with >20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and chemical industry, including positions in the President’s Office Merck Biopharma and positions reporting directly to the Heads of Research and Development at Bayer and Merck. In his current role for example he designed and implemented the Merck Innovation Cup, the Curious-Future Insight Conference, the Merck Future Insight Prize, the Darmstadt Science Declaration, the idea competition innospire and the BioMed X Outcubator.…

Broadly described, innovation comes from within an organization – internal – or from sources outside – external. Besides, in terms of its nature and effects, innovating can be targeted or disruptive. Targeted innovation, often also called incremental innovation, means that there is a clear and stated aim of the innovative process, for example, the development of a more energy-efficient washing machine. Disruptive innovation does not have a clear direction; it is a search process based on experimentation and trials. Certain types of industries may have traditionally tended to one side or the other. For example, gas turbine manufacturers have gradually become more efficient over the last fifty years, while producers of fast-moving consumer goods such as vegan food alternatives, electronic gadgets, or computer games with new versions and Blockchain-based platforms, are…

Christoph Burger is a senior lecturer at ESMT Berlin. Before joining in 2003, he worked in industry at Otto Versand and as vice president at Bertelsmann Buch AG, in consulting practice at Arthur D. Little, and as an independent consultant focusing on private equity financing of SMEs. His research focus is in innovation/blockchain and energy markets. Burger studied business administration at the University of Saarbrücken (Germany), the Hochschule St. Gallen (Switzerland), and economics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (US). As a founder, investor, author, and lecturer, Christoph Räthke has been a driving force in the German startup ecosystem since 1999. With his podcast angelsofdeutschland.de, he sttives to get more people excited about startup investing, while his methods, articles, university lectures, and events aim to give aspiring founders a better…

Almost two years ago Lenzing CEO Stefan Doboczky announced the company’s goal to reduce its CO2 emissions by 50 percent till 2030 and be completely CO2 neutral in 2050. An ambitius target, which can only be achieved through a clear reduction readmap, innovations, collaborations along the supply chain and measures which go beyond legal requirements. Now Lenzing is setting a new benchmark with a completely new offering for VEOCEL™ branded lyocell fiber, delivering a product that is more representative of its overall strategy than any other: it will be the industry's first carbon neutral fiber. With the new range of VEOCEL™ Lyocell fibres, it enables its partners in the nonwovens and branded goods industries to reduce their own impact on the climate by using fibres with net-zero reduced carbon footprint. As a…

In a turbulent business landscape where the danger of becoming unsuitable to deal with sudden changes is ever-present, business leaders are confronted with an urgent need to draw on a wide range of different skill sets. In the midst of all the uncertainty, business educators have been hard at work to arm these professional executives with the intellectual arsenal and expertise they will need to robustly handle such challenges. With French roots dating back to 1907, ESSEC Business School has fashioned itself as a titular academic institution with the goal of passing on cutting-edge knowledge to new generations of curious minds with a passion to lead and influence. In order to prepare tomorrow’s leaders for the trans-formative changes of today, be it in technological, industrial, managerial or social spaces, ESSEC developed an educational…