By David Matheson, SmartOrg We recently helped a major chemical company conduct its portfolio review for 128 growth projects. Using SmartOrg’s Portfolio Navigator web-based evaluation platform, they systematically looked at the uncertainties in their business cases. Many project leaders saw tremendous upside and developed ways to pursue it. But when I systematically looked across the

By David Matheson, SmartOrg I was presenting the results of an in-depth portfolio review to the president of a major chemical company. “Will I meet my growth goals?” she asked. Every planning process in the company involved her setting a goal and the business units (BUs) responding with how they were going to meet them.

Download PDF By David Matheson, SmartOrg At the Front End of Innovation event in Boston last month, Alexa Dembek of DuPont and Neal Gutterson of Corteva Agriscience shared their perspectives on navigating the Merger of the Century between DuPont and Dow Chemical. The merged DowDuPont has split into three separate publicly-traded entities: Dow for commodity

By David Matheson, SmartOrg At a recent workshop, a group of 35 R&D and innovation executives in industries ranging from automotive to healthcare came together to benchmark improvement potential. Each selected a real example project from their portfolio and applied an estimation model based on benchmarks and experience developed at DuPont Safety & Construction with

Download PDF By David Matheson, SmartOrg Breakthrough innovation takes an organization out of its familiar comfort zone into a realm of uncertainty. Unlike incremental innovations into existing product domains and markets, where the behavior of technology and customers is well understood, breakthrough innovations entail using new technologies, selling to new kinds of customers, or both.