Innovate in what you do!

This is the most gratifying day of our lifes!

For the past four years, we have envisioned, created and scaled Employee Innovation at Bayer. We have created an innovation ecosystem, in which every employee can have access to innovation resources and help to find solutions that make the lives of our customers better. Be it through our innovation platform WeSolve Hub, reaching more than 40.000 employees, through one of our 1000+ innovation coaches in more than 70 countries, via our 7 LifeHubs, or with our Lean Startup-based Innovation Program CATALYST, through which we supported more than 75 projects of which 6 have launched till date and 11 are under way with a total annual revenue potential way beyond EUR 1bn. If you are interested, find more details in our Harvard Business Review Article on how to foster employee innovation in a 150 year old company or in a recent Blog-Post on how companies should manage innovation portfolios.

Today, we aim to make this endeavor sustainable by handing over our robust operations to our friends and colleagues in Bayer’s Divisions (e.g. at Crop Science) and the Digital Transformation team. We defined innovation as something new creating value. And with business value being generated by our divisions, we are very happy that they now take full ownership of the portfolio and the approach, to make it an integral part of the business.

Julia Hitzbleck and I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who was essential to make this happen over the past years. We start with the team with Peng Zhong and Ouelid Ouyeder who created the Catalyst Program from scratch and dramatically evolved it over the past three seasons, Simone Jonek and Janina Tosic, Jan Sch?rger as well as Chara Balasubramanian, who build up and ran our fantastic coach network and tied it well with other HR initiatives, Diana Stürmer, Stefanie Sch?ne, Wolfgang Laska, Puneet Shrivastava, Mario Antonio Alvarez Enriquez and Diana Medeiros Placido, who designed, developed and run our Innovation Platforms (WeSolve Hub and YOUniverse) as well as Krysia Sommers who substantially drove the engagement across the organization through Innovation Days, photo contests and Ted Talks to name a few. Camilla Navarro who has been an outstanding Innovation Ambassador in Brazil and joined on short-term assignment like many others such as Lea Kirsten, Bilyana Vasileva, Navya Chalasani, Marjorie Gomez, Alina Czeczinski, HuiPing Huang, Maikel Gobran, Raymond Huang, Gordon Redlich, Francisco Martin Gandara, Paul Hoffmann, Mario Oltersdorf; Johannes Kiessling and Gennadi Rabinovic, Fabian Christian Hinzmann, Felix Reul, Erik Ehlert, Nina Richter, Beat Hollstein, Florian Rausch, Leon Holzer, Christoph Kallenberg, Andreas Gasper, Sheila Freudenthal and Nikolas von der Assen, who all have been an integral part of our team along this journey, contributing to and forming our mission and activities. Not to forget Jesus del Vale, Tom Maes, Oliver Winkelman, Carolin Gebhardt, Timo Werneke and Alon Harris who became honorary team members due to all the input and mutual discussions along the journey.

While the monetary outcome of the past years is most tangible in the Catalyst Fund Projects, the transformation towards an innovation mindset and creation of all those ideas was driven by our community of Innovation Ambassadors and Coaches, who brought the Innovation Agenda to life in more than 70 countries, all our divisions and enabling functions. It is impossible to list the countless activities that happened around the world, integrating an innovation mindset into the local culture and operations; many of these examples have been shared on Linked in in the past by our Ambassadors: Ake R?smann, Akihisa Oshima, Amine (Mohamed) Rachid, Amit Sharma, Andreas Schremmer, Anja-Christina Albert, Annie Chan, Anthony Maina, Antonio Payano, Arne Braun, Arto Pakkalin, Atanas Yurchiev, Barton Warner, Benjamin Rambaud, Bettina Fiedler, Blanca Lissette Estrada Tenaz, Bogus Tobiasz , Brenda van Schaijk, Camila Navarro, Carolina Ibanez, Celina Chew, Chee Wang, Christian Albert Meyer, Christophe Kampa, Coulten Legge, Daniel Rudhardt, Daphne Arzoumanidou-Partheniadi, David Yeh, Diana Medeiros Placido, Dilek Bocuk, Don Sawyer, Dora Cano, Eduardo Garcia, Eric Ruggirello, Erik Louvel, Ernst Boettcher , Faheem Ahmad, Farouk Hegazy, Frank-Michael Fritsch , Franz Strehle, Gokay Kilic, Grant Steyn, Heike B?rger , Heike Roeder, Henrik Wulff , Hirohito Katayama, Hiroo Igarashi, HyunJin Chong, Ilka Schellschmidt, Ingrid Reinkober, Jai Prakash Donakanti, Jamie Showrank, Jason Nash, Jeff Lai, Jens Reinhold, Jerry Outram, Joerg Thomaier, Johanna Kouru, John Smid, Jordi Sanchez Rodriguez, Jose Desousa, Joseph Havrilla, Kai Lin, Karen Garcia Martinez, Karen Hackney, Karen Wei, Karin Guemmer, Katharina Au, Katharina Kassuehlke , Kathrin Kleefuss, Kathryn Jones-Orr, Kseniya Knyazeva, Marc Hofer, Maria, Marcela Chacon Castro, Marin Krsto Odak, Mario Andreoli, Marion McPherson, Markus Edingloh, Marlin Westfall, Matthew Frost, Meg Waloschek, Melissa Hara, Michael Heite, Michelle Cornu , Michelle Shogren, Min Calndrier, Miriam Bebber , Miriam Holstein, Mohammed Jimoh, Monica Toikka, MyungHee Rhee, Nicolas Bahamon, Olaf Gerber , Olaf Stange, Oliver Bruemmer, Oliver Rittgen, Oliver Winkelmann, Pablo D’Amico, Paolo Zanzi, Peter Gent, Peter Vowinckel, Prashanth Chakravartula, Risa Fogel, Rob Hullme, Roberto Franzo, Ruzha Draganova, Shashank Shukla , Shaw Lamberson, Shunichi Takahashi, Siddarth Soni , Sonja Garreis, Sriram Varadarajan, Stephanie Rinkel, Susan Robel, Susanne Ongor, Theresa Natalicchio , Thierry Hardy, Thomas Ramdahl, Tierdyn Cleminson, Tom Kinzel, Tom Maes, Torsten Bielig, Vladimir Stepanyuk , Wim Gerits, Xuan He, Ying Chen, Yossi Ifergan.

We would not have gotten the traction in the divisions without our Venture Board Members in Crop Science, with Frank Terhorst, Jim Swanson, Leticia Goncalves, Mathias Kremer, Henrik Olesen, Jerry Outram, Aaron Robinson, Jürgen Benting and Mark-Andre G?dertz in Consumer Health Patricia Corsi, Gaby Vreeken, Sharon James, Karen Hackney, Reese Fitzpatrick, Richard He, Coulton Ledge and Martin Dos Ramos and Pharma with Reinhard Franzen, Sebastian Guth, Mike Devoy, Annegrethe Mortensen and Antonio Payano, Ted Castellon Uwe Dalichow and Joachim Luithle and are very thankful to them, especially for the support of the catalyst team to clear their way from intrinsic hurdels in order to allow innovation to flourish.

Deep thanks also go to our friends and colleagues, for example in HR Matthias Schramm, Marco B?hmer, Selina Reich and Rebekka Manos who helped us integrating the innovation mindset and behaviors into Bayer’s Focus Behaviors (Customer Focus, Experimentation, Collaboration & Trust) as well as to connect with talent development and countless change initiatives; or in Communications with Christophe Kampa, Alexander Hennig and Dieter Hilla, who supported us to communicate about our initiative and integrated many of the ideas from our innovation platforms into our new intranet.

A big thanks you also goes to our strategic partners like Alexander Osterwalder, Shamira Miller, Paris Thomas, Christina Doll and Tendayi Viki from www.strategyzer.com, Jan Kennedy, Merlijn Knol, Caroline Hooft-Slootweg, Urs Rothmayr, Oril Bes and Bj?rn ühss from www.afce.co, Amnon Levav, Yael manor, Yoaf Mimram, Eres Tsalik, Shiri Yardeni, Karen Schmerer, Roy bender Cohen Grant Harris and Nurit Cohen from www.sitsite.com, Moritz Sebastian Wurfbaum and Scarlett Wolter from www.innosabi.com as well as Jaroslav Dokoupil and Francisco Palao from www.openexo.com for co-creating many of the offerings we have in our innovation ecosystem today.

At this point, I also want to thank Marjin Dekkers, who saw the need for employee driven innovation already about a decade ago and initiated everything that followed. Finally my thanks go Monika Lessl and our former Board Member for Innovation Kemal Malik (Kemal, please get a LinkedIn account) for all the support, openness and liberty we had to drive this transformation.

We are now looking forward to our next endeavors around strategic challenges and the need for innovation in our Health- and Nutrition-ecosystems.

Julia and Henning

Fun fact: we shared this as an article here, since the posts are limited to 1300 something characters and thus do not allow to include everyone in one post,.. Unfortunately co-authoring is also not possible on LinkedIn.