In this presentation, Tuija Pohjolainen Hiltunen reflects on 22 years of experience in the water‑treatment industry and explains how Kemira, a multinational chemical company, strives to industrialise innovation to meet aggressive growth targets. She outlines the need for a cultural shift toward systematic idea generation, disciplined scoring, and structured R&D project management, arguing that innovation must be a company‑wide responsibility rather than the work of isolated individuals. The talk contrasts traditional stage‑gate pipelines with a more iterative, circular process that emphasises continuous dialogue between R&D, sales, and customers. Key success factors highlighted include clear business ownership of projects, early and sustained sales involvement, co‑development with customers, and robust feedback loops. Tuija also acknowledges the challenges Kemira faces—particularly cultural resistance and motivating multinational teams—while stressing that motivated people are the ultimate drivers of successful commercialization. The presentation concludes with a call to focus on people, not just processes or tools, to achieve the target of doubling innovation‑based sales by 2016.
Chapters
Ladies and gentlemen, nice to see you all here and nice to be here with you. It has been interesting day. I have been working in water treatment industry 22 years in fact since graduation. And I noticed that very many topics are still the same and some new interesting ideas of course approaching and always pumping up. But I would say that 90% maybe is something what we all have heard already years and years. So this innovation part is really extremely important topic and that's what I'm trying to also illustrate to you here. How in Kemira we try to ensure as a big multinational, at least in the Scandinavian perspective, maybe mid size in the global perspective. But anyway, as a multinational company, how do you ensure that you keep on having these ideas which you can commercialize then in the end of the day, first I'm reasoning Jeff made it very blunt and clear, if you don't grow, you will die. Well, that's of course a motivation. Most of us as listed companies, we do face huge organic growth targets and that is of course driving us to somehow industrialize the innovation. We need to ensure that it's not one timer, one innovative person who builds up the potential revenue and the profitability. You need to have the whole organization deliver to this common task. In Kemera we have an ambitious target to double our innovative based sales until 2016. So we should have 10% of the revenues already coming from so called new products and new applications. Touching more the process side, how does this kind of big company, multinational company tackle the process? And I think most of us have some kind of stage gate process in place. When we talk about new ideas, how to handle the projects, how to handle the funeral of the ideas, how to ensure something comes out of the stage gate and hopefully successfully. And we use these illustrations to show the process. I think already an improvement is if it's a circle rather than a pipeline. Because some kind of interaction is definitely one of the crucial things, what you need to have in the end of the pipeline before the new product, new application is really ready for the market. There should be a proper dialogue not only inside the company, but of course with the customer who is then supposed to benefit from the outcome. That is of course obvious. And I have, in these 22 years I have tried to detect in all the companies I have been serving, I have tried to detect in the processes that what was the key success factor? Why did somebody, somewhere, some team succeed? And to put it very simple, there is a couple of key words only I have tried to capture my own feeling. What was the successful factor in these areas, in the ideation phase, I would say that companies who are having a culture of innovation are successful in the idea evaluation, some kind of disciplined method, quantifying method of scoring the ideas. I have found useful and successful again in the project management, in the R and D project management. I think especially in Scandinavia, we have had for maybe a decade a feeling that when you have a bunch of very clever people working, you don't maybe need so much management or steering or especially not supervision. And that is maybe not the full truth. If you think the very efficient new product and application development, some kind of disciplined way of organizing projects seem to be bringing better success than unorganized, undisciplined way of working in the commercialization phase. Again, the business ownership is a key. That's quite obvious, I think for everybody. Of course, it's a big question. It's also a resource question. How long are you able to have business sales participating in the R and D project, which might take years. And the commitment of course comes by involvement and commitment and contribution. So you should somehow be able to turn the whole R and D process into a business process. And I think those companies who have managed to do that have again proven in my mind to be successful. And then that feedback from successful or let's say still a raw idea which is almost ready for market. If there is proper feedback between customer, between the sales and the R and D and you are able to kind of together co develop it until it's really matured enough to go to the market, then you have succeeded with something very, very important and crucial. So this is the ideal world. And in Kemira, I think I'm totally honest now with you guys. We are definitely not totally perfect there. It's not in every place exactly like that. And Faye was giving me an advice and say that, well, it would be much more interesting if you bring up some challenges. So definitely there are, I think in every company there are challenges. And I would say that cultural change to be truly innovative is one of the key challenges. What we are facing and we try to find the ways to come over it, we do have different target harmonization programs and very typical means how companies are trying to streamline the targets. But still I think that is one of the key challenges. And especially in that commercialization phase, we are facing several challenges. My final 30 seconds goes to the conclusion what I would like to say and it's illustrated in the last picture with these great guys who are working in sales R and D application. And I would say that in addition to considering only the process, we should remember that we are anyway human beings and people working in those processes. And in the multinationals, it is far more difficult to ensure great motivation of those teams, because motivated teams are the ones who make that success to happen. You can have how fancy software tools in your hands for ideation and whatever. If your people don't feel like doing it, it's a lost game. So my. My opening slide was saying how does multinationals should ensure innovation? And I would say it's from the people. So let's remember to motivate the great doers, we still need them.
