Bayer: Science For A Better Life - research

Editorial

Shaping the future as an inventor company

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Werner Wenning, Chairman of the Board of Management of Bayer AG

Our mission statement “Bayer: Science For A Better Life” underscores our desire as an inventor company to shape the future and to pursue innovation for the benefit of humankind. We have been extremely successful in this endeavor. Just last year, for example, we submitted more than 660 patent applications.

The growth engine of innovation is running at full speed in all our subgroups, as well as at Bayer Technology Services and Bayer Innovation GmbH. To achieve our objectives, we are also relying on key areas such as biotechnology and nanotechnology. Biotechnology in particular could prove to be the central technology of the 21st century.

The benefits of this technology are apparent in the most varied of applications. Bayer is active and successful in all areas of biotechnology, whether red, green or white. Red biotechnology involves medical applications, where biotechnology-based drug production is already making an impact in the treatment of life-threatening diseases. One example is Kogenate, our tried and true drug product used to combat hemophilia.

Green biotechnology has set itself the target of breeding plants that can thrive on markedly less water or grow in extremely salty soils. These developments therefore make an important contribution towards safeguarding yields and thus ensuring that the world's growing population will have access to sufficient and healthy food.

Bayer's expertise in white biotechnology ranges from the potential production of energy crops to the planning of biofuel production plants.

Our Group-wide “Triple-i” initiative - the three i’s stand for “Inspiration, Ideas and Innovation” - is also aimed at expanding our innovation capability. The initiative calls on all employees worldwide to submit business and project ideas, even if they go beyond the current activities handled by our subgroups or can be found at their interfaces. Triple-i has met with an extraordinarily positive response from our workforce around the world. This is evident in part in the impressive 1,500 proposals submitted within the first six months. Furthermore, the high quality of many of the proposals underscores the tremendous creative potential than can be unleashed in this way.

One thing is clear: the mission statement of the inventor company Bayer is being lived day after day – at all levels of the company.