Emerging Insights Create New Opportunities

Specialty Chemicals and Biotechnology companies by their nature have been able to grow on masteriıng the 'hard' scientific and process technology competencies that are business critical, however high performance companies over the past decades have learned science and process technologies are not sufficient.

Executives and managers have to lead the organization in their functional, technical, and business roles, develop or maintain an organization that is capable of strategic decision-making and execution, make the best use of their internal knowledge, develop a leadership pipeline, and build new capabilities.

When companies identify the need to expand their compenties and capabilities, a route often pursued is external training and development, such as an MBA, leadership development, project management, strategy development, or an organizational change management course.

Over the past decade or so, longitudinal studies in non-STEM discipines have demonstrated that many such traditional approaches are not increasing business performance, are costly, and time-consuming. Companies need noticable tangible improvments within one-two years, and not five years.

The evidence of what works better points towards an approach whereby leaders and managers increasingly take accountability for their own and employees' development, instead of outsourcing (non)-STEM capabilities and leaving it to chance. Integration of industrial functional experience with evidenced based practices from non-STEM critical disciplines accelerates the design, implementation and the lıkelihood of successful business outcomes.

The implications are that companies need to develop their own unique performance initiatives, taking into account their culture, business, and science-technological capabilities.