Bayer's Innovation Agenda PDF

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Julian Birkinshaw
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Enrique De Diego LBS Ref: CS-18-23
Monika Lessl HBP: LBS208
Henning Trill August 2018
Bayer’s Innovation Agenda:
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Igniting innovation in a 100,000-person company
Innovation had always been fundamental to the success of Bayer, one of the largest life-science
companies in the world. But with important changes underway in the worlds of pharma and crop
science, as well as broader trends in digital disruption, there was a recognition that innovation driven
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by the traditional R&D process alone would not be sufficient. As one executive commented:
We face exponentially increasing opportunities and we need to keep pace.

Healthcare hasn’t been disrupted yet but we can see it coming, with new health
management services and novel treatment paradigms such as gene editing. And if
you go to a farm, it has nothing to do with what you would see in a farm 15 years ago,
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with autonomously driven tractors that do everything. You can probably run a farm
from your office and only need a couple of people who do the maintenance on site.
The role of the doctor will also change as they will be heavily assisted by artificial
intelligence.
Beginning in 2016 an agenda started to take shape. The innovation team was led by Monika Lessl,
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who reported to Board member Kemal Malik:
We have deliberately taken a systemic approach – to make innovation the

responsibility of all Bayer employees. We need to inspire people, help them learn
new skills, and enable them to collaborate and connect in new ways.
By early 2018 the innovation programme had real momentum: more than 1,000 people had some sort
of formal role in support of innovation, more than 5,000 people had been involved in innovation training,
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and more than 35,000 people were connected through the innovation portal.
Julian Birkinshaw is Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship, London Business School. Enrique de Diego is an alumni of London
Business School. Monika Lessl and Henning Trill of Bayer provided advice and assistance with the writing of the case.
London Business School cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion and are not intended to serve as endorsements,
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Yet Monika was still concerned that they weren’t doing enough. How could they be sure that their
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efforts would make a real difference? How could they make innovation a natural way of working for
every Bayer employee? This process of cultural change was a significant challenge for Bayer,
particularly at a time when the company was about to finalise its acquisition of Monsanto, a 20,000-
person, US-based producer of genetically engineered seeds.
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Background and group strategy
Bayer was founded in 1863 as a dye company and over the decades it expanded into a range of
technologically-related areas, including specialty chemicals, pharmaceuticals and crop science. By
the 2010s it was a diversified technology company, organised into three main sub-groups: HealthCare,
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including Pharmaceuticals and Consumer Health; CropScience; and MaterialScience. In 2016 it
employed approximately 120,000 people across 75 countries and had sales of €46.7 billion.
In 2010 Marijn Dekkers was appointed CEO, the first non-German to hold the role. He drove the
acquisition of part of Merck & Co to beef up Bayer’s over-the-counter drug business. He also invented
the ‘LIFE’ values (Leadership, Integrity, Flexibility, Efficiency).
In 2015 he announced a major corporate restructuring: Bayer would focus on its core life-science
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businesses (Pharmaceuticals, Consumer Health, CropScience) and spin off its MaterialScience
business as a separate company, Covestro, in 2016 (see Exhibit 1). While many observers had been
arguing for Bayer to make this move, it was not without risk: former competitors ICI and Hoechst had
separated out their chemical and healthcare businesses in previous decades, leading to their eventual
disappearance as the component parts were bought up by other companies.
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Bayer believed that a steadily growing and aging population would be in need of better medicines and
adequate food supply. It summarised this belief in its mission, Bayer: Science For A Better Life.
Innovation was central to delivering on this mission, with an annual R&D expenditure in excess of €4
billion.
One of Marijn Dekkers’ initiatives was to send all members of the Bayer Group Leadership Circle (GLC)
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from 2012-2014 to an innovation training led by Harvard Professor Stefan Thomke. Here, the GLC
members deliberated on what initiatives the company could undertake to make innovation more
effective and impactful. A general concern shared by the participants was how to further promote
innovation in the company, taking into account that it had almost 120,000 employees in 75 countries.
One of the most frequent proposals was the creation of an internal collaboration tool, initially called
‘Seeker/Solver platform’ and later rebranded ‘WeSolve’.
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WeSolve was an online portal where people across the company could post problems or challenges
and get co-workers to respond to them. Launched in May 2014, it quickly gained traction and over the
© 2018 London Business School

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first year the WeSolve team posted 95 challenges and over 1,500 unique contributions (see Exhibit 2
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for timeline). Diana Medeiros, the creator of WeSolve, provided an example of how it worked:
Consider a challenge posted by Nathan Mendes from the Bayer Crop Sciences (BCS)
team in Brazil. Nathan described the situation he faced in 2014 with a major loss in
sales because of increases in counterfeiting (i.e. fake products targeting the BCS
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product). On WeSolve he asked for creative ideas to address this problem and within
weeks there were around 100 discussion posts, typically from people drawing on their
own experience of fighting counterfeiting in countries such as India and China. Two
solutions were selected for further development – one involved a security sticker/seal
for packaging caps, the other was a software application to enable the consumer to
detect fake products at the click of a button. As recognition of the inputs of his
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colleagues from all over the world, Nathan selected 14 solvers to be rewarded.
While people felt that WeSolve had been a success, questions were also asked about how the platform
would evolve over time. Experience showed that it needed a central team to keep the challenges
refreshed and a network of WeSolve Coaches around the company to ensure its continued use.
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Increasing the reach of innovation
In 2015 Kemal Malik initiated a programme to further promote Bayer’s innovation capabilities and to
broaden the approach to innovation. Monika Lessl was chosen to head the newly formed Innovation
Strategy team. She said:
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Innovation had historically been equivalent to R&D, which is essential but not enough
right now. The world is moving from an information age to an agile age; it is changing
with disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence and a different focus on the
customer. It’s moving fast, so this means we need to innovate in everything we do
and drive product, process and business-model innovation.
Monika put in place a cross-divisional and cross-functional team to identify the most important areas
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to tackle. They identified four main areas to work on:
 Communicate to position Bayer as an innovation leader in life sciences;

 Cultivate an environment where innovation can flourish;
 Collaborate to get access to novel ideas and expertise through open innovation and cross-
functional collaboration;
 Create organisational structures and governance processes promoting innovation in a
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sustainable manner.

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In all these areas some progress had already been made, but typically in a piecemeal way. For
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example, Bayer had collaborations with a range of external partners in North America and Europe and
there was also the WeSolve platform. Monika said:
WeSolve was already running in parallel, but it was only one global tool and not a
strategy. There was nothing on how to promote innovation in a holistic and systematic
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way in the entire organisation.
Through a series of workshops, surveys and internal team discussions, progress was made on all four
of these areas. One important piece of work was making sense of Bayer’s culture and identifying the
opportunities for changes there. Mélanie Heroult, who led this piece of work, commented:
We analysed many surveys and did a number of interviews. There was a clear pattern:
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Bayer was seen as reliable, scientific, trustful and process-oriented. These were
clearly strengths of our culture. But at the same time, our organisation was
characterised as relatively less open, less collaborative and less sharing in terms of
knowledge.
The team recognised the need for tools to improve collaboration and connectivity. Mélanie said these
elements were “key to develop a more agile culture.” It also became clear that culture is the result of
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behaviours and norms – “how you do things” in an organisation. Therefore, the approach was to focus
on specific behaviours to impact the culture.
The team connected with the HR department and, in a joint effort, four focus behaviours were identified
as key enablers of an innovation-driven culture: customer focus, experimentation, collaboration and
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trust. These were subsequently rolled out across the company.
While the innovation programme was taking shape, changes were underway in Bayer’s corporate
strategy. In 2015, as previously announced, the polymer business was carved out as Covestro and
the remaining businesses were brought closer together, with a view to creating greater synergies
between them. Mélanie reflected:
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Before, when we were part of a holding company, there were some barriers to
exchanging information among colleagues from CropScience, HealthCare and
MaterialScience for IP reasons – they were different legal entities – but now we all
belong to the same company. This means that we have a real need to face
competitiveness, refocus where we are in the business and where we want to play in
the future.
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Defining the Innovation Agenda
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The innovation strategy was pulled together and presented by Monika and Kemal to the Group Board
in August 2015, who swiftly signed it off. The goal was to promote innovation in a systematic manner
by focusing on four main pillars: Inspire, Learn, Collaborate, and Connect (see Exhibit 3). As Monika
explained:
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The first goal was defining our ambition – what do we want to achieve (providing a
better life on this planet through innovations in health and nutrition), as a way to
inspire and engage our employees in innovation? Second, we needed to give people
the right skills, so they know how to do it. Third was to give them the tools so that
they know where to find all the information and the right partners to collaborate.
Fourth was about having an organisational structure to enable innovation.
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With the Innovation Agenda, Bayer wanted to demonstrate that innovation was possible in every
aspect of the business. This meant new products and new technologies, but also new processes and
services and even new business models.
In 2016 Monika’s team started to turn the Innovation Agenda into reality. It was clear that the process
of change would take several years and that it would involve a large number of linked initiatives, built
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around the four enablers:
We recognise the huge challenge here, trying to transform a 150-year-old corporation.

And we know there won’t be one single activity or initiative that will make it a success
– the real challenge here is how you reach 100,000 people. So we have to be flexible
and evolve our way of thinking over time.
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To provide coherence to the Innovation Agenda, a single internal platform called YOUniverse was
created (see Exhibit 4), from which an employee could gain access to all the different initiatives
described below, as well as existing tools such as WeSolve. YOUniverse was also a way to get in
touch with Innovation Coaches and Ambassadors (see below).
To provide oversight, in 2016 Kemal put in place an Innovation Committee, comprised of 14 Senior
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Business Leaders who governed the Innovation Agenda and global initiatives. This committee
included representatives from all divisions (CropScience, ConsumerHealth and Pharma) and regions
and met at least twice a year. It was one of the few committees in Bayer that had permanent attention
from the Board of Directors. Monika noted:
These are the people who foster and shape innovation in Bayer. Their role is to
govern the Innovation Agenda and pave the way to make it happen.
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Inspire
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To make innovation a business-as-usual activity, it was important for people to see evidence that it
was going on across Bayer:
We need to show them what is possible, and how they can get involved – to inspire
the people.
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Through the YOUniverse portal, people could read about recent innovation successes and look at
stories of colleagues experimenting with new ideas.
Stories about innovation could be filtered by country and business line to help people find something
relevant to themselves. For example, the marketing department could easily find news around a
specific event, such as innovation in pharma in Argentina, which could be used later in the company’s
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promotional materials.
Another initiative was Innovation Days – local events to increase awareness of innovation,
communicate the Innovation Agenda and inspire employees to take an active role in innovation. The
events followed a generic structure (see Exhibit 5), but with lots of scope for customisation. Some
involved inviting people from other industries or start-ups to give inspiring talks.1 Others were highly
participative. For example, in Japan the theme of one innovation day was “Breaking out of the shell”.
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Using an egg as a symbol, it comprised an inspirational speech by Kemal Malik followed by showcases
of innovation from Bayer teams and external start-ups and ended, after an external presentation, in
an ideation session moderated by Bayer Innovation Coaches around customer-centric marketing. The
ideas of the session were followed up by the coaches. In 2016 and 2017 Innovation Days were held
in many countries, including Benelux, Italy, Japan, China, USA, Canada, Germany, Poland, Korea,
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Indonesia, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico and others.
There were also Photo Contests, with prizes such as Apple watches given to the winners (see Exhibit
6). One executive noted:
The objective of this tool is to make employees aware of the fact that by changing
your angle you can change your perception of reality. Despite the simplicity of these
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contests, these had received much attention from the community and was an
effective tool.
Learn
The next enabler was around learning and development. Chara Balasubramanian, who was leading
the innovation learning process, observed:
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Innovation requires a whole new set of skills and we cannot assume that people will
just pick these skills up on the job.

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Most senior leaders in Bayer had been on a course on innovation, but the objective was to push
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innovation training much deeper into the company, so that the whole process of innovation could be
democratised. Several methodologies had been used over the years. Henning Trill, Head of Corporate
Innovation, said:
After reviewing a number of options, we chose three core methodologies to drive
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innovation: SIT (Systematic Inventive Thinking) to give people a tool to quickly create
new and out-of-the-box ideas; Design Thinking to drive customer-centricity in order
to focus the ideation around customer needs; and Lean Startup to quickly get
projects through fast experimentation to the execution or implementation of these
ideas.
SIT was a set of tools to help people tackle problems in new ways. As Monika observed:
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This methodology helped to overcome the fear of starting from a blank sheet of paper.
It was an easy way to structure ideas and foster innovation more widely.
(See Appendix 1 for more details of the methodology).
The first round of training programmes was organised in 2016. Unlike traditional courses, the SIT
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programmes were problem-centred: the tools were introduced and used to tackle a real-life situation
confronting a business. In one case, a marketing department complained how long the approval
process for promotional materials took as it involved several sign-offs from different departments and
could take up to three months. Using the SIT methodology, the marketing team was able to
systematically subtract and divide up parts of the existing process in order to come up with a new
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process that was simpler and lower cost.
Employees were given access to several online training options. Every one or two months there were
courses, such as storytelling or creativity, from leading innovation companies such as IDEO. These
were first offered to members of the Innovation Network, who had to apply for them, but the idea was
that they would be opened to anyone in the organisation.
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Overall, more than 5,000 people were involved in some kind of innovation learning. Some people also
leveraged the ‘Learn’ section on YOUniverse, with more than 1,500 people downloading learning
materials by the end of 2017.
Collaborate
To help people to collaborate internally or with external partners there were several platforms available,
all offering some type of crowd-sourcing activity:
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1. Internal crowdsourcing: The existing WeSolve platform was still going strong. Over the years
it had evolved, incorporating feedback from users and improving its usability. The 2016 version

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also had a language-translation feature for those in Bayer who didn’t speak English. Me Ling,
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an Innovation Coach who had been in charge of WeSolve, observed:
Engineering loves the tool. They love to get there and solve issues or just give ideas,
though many don’t like to post questions. They feel they are the experts, so they can’t
be seen asking questions.
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Thanks partly to the success of WeSolve, the innovation strategy team identified opportunities to
expand the collaboration platforms.
WeSolve-Quickfire was a recent addition, so employees could post a challenge in the morning and
people could contribute to its solution during the day. In one challenge, for example, a consumer health
team was eager to learn what brands were placed next to its own brand in shelves across the world.
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Putting this up as a challenge resulted in more than 50 pictures from all over the world being uploaded
in 48 hours.
Beyond solving technical problems, WeSolve was also used as a tool to listen to the organisation and
get an opinion. For example, in early 2017, in an effort to make the organisation more agile, a project
was started to ‘innovate’ the current performance management tool. As a first step, the WeSolve
platform was used to get input into what a new performance management system might look like. The
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Board member for HR, Hartmut Klusik, acted as a challenge owner. More than 250 people responded,
leading to a lively discussion and a good starting point for the project. Initial ideas ranged from
completely dismissing any performance management to very detailed and specific rewards systems
for individuals and teams.
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2. External crowdsourcing: Recognising that even a company the size of Bayer has finite
resources, external partnerships were encouraged using a new open innovation platform
(www.innovate.bayer.com). More than five years earlier, the first such platform,
Grants4Targets, had been launched to find new starting points for medicines. The format was
further expanded in Grants4Apps, looking for digital health tools, and Grants4 Indications,
aiming to explore options for novel indications of existing Bayer compounds.
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A central open innovation platform was established to expand these activities across the organisation
and this led to the establishment of a series of new programmes, namely Grants4targets and
Grants4Traits for Crop Science, as well as Grants4Tech, looking for innovative tech solutions in
production.
3. Intrapreneurship: The CATALYST programme was created in 2017 to support internal

innovation teams and activate the innovation network. It used a lean start-up approach, giving
teams insight into design thinking, business model innovation and fast experimentation
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techniques. The programme had three levels, depending on the size and maturity of the
opportunity.

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At the entry level individuals or small teams were given access to Catalyst Box (similar to Adobe Kick-
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box), an on-the-job training in lean start-up methods, which enabled some early de-risking of their
business opportunity. The box was supported by an online tool, the option for 1:1 coach support, and
a ‘clinic hour’ so the teams could run the process at their own pace.
For larger opportunities teams could submit their challenge or opportunity to the corporate team; the
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most relevant were selected biannually by a jury of Innovation Ambassadors (see below) and business
leaders. These projects were supported intensely for four months to go through a lean start-up-like
process: 1:1 coaching and a slack fund for experimentation. For many, the approach of initially
experimenting with user behaviour (desirability), rather than experimenting with the technical solution
(feasibility), was new. Teams were often very sceptical in the beginning, but quickly understood the
value of exposing the customer to new situations. Many teams were also able to break the fixed idea
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that, in a regulated environment, they could not talk to the customer. For example, in Pharma, with the
appropriate support from the legal and patient engagement functions, teams could quickly reach out
to patients and doctors in a fully compliant way. Team members were expected to invest about 10
hours per week during this time. The goal was for the team to make a pitch for funding from their
business unit (with some co-funding from corporate if necessary). In 2017, 28 projects were supported
this way; the goal for 2018 was 40. By early 2018, three of the opportunities were already used in their
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first niche markets.
Connect
A fourth enabler was making sure employees could easily contact the right people in the organisation.
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Like other large firms, Bayer had a well established hierarchy in which people worked well with others
in their silos, but without good horizontal relationships to other silos. Monika reflected:
I was inspired by this article2 from management guru John Kotter, who shared the
idea that you can build an informal network to drive innovation in parallel to the
existing hierarchical structure. This is the idea we are using to build this agile network.
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However, there is no blueprint for how to do this. We are building all this from scratch.
You can read a lot of literature, but you need to find a solution that fits your needs.
The notion of an ‘agile network’ resonated with other members of the innovation team. WeSolve had
been a success in part because of the network of WeSolve Coaches it had built up around the world
and there was already a high-level Innovation Committee of 14 senior leaders who, together with
Monika, were overseeing the Innovation Agenda. But Monika realised that Bayer would need many
hundred people in its agile network, which would be a bigger challenge than most companies faced.
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Henning Trill described how they defined the roles they wanted people to play in the agile network:
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We needed to make the network accessible across the organisation, so we created
the role of the Innovation Coach, usually an individual contributor or first-line manager
who spends about one to two days a month supporting colleagues with innovation.
We assumed a ratio of 1:200 with other employees and we wanted them to be
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available at all sites, so this meant about 600 coaches. But it was also important to
align the coaches’ activities to our strategy. If you let them run ideation sessions
without a clear sense of direction, you just create frustration when ideas aren’t
implemented. So we also created the role of Innovation Ambassador; more senior
people who could help align the efforts of the Innovation Coaches.
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Making the Agile Network operational
Looking across the four pillars, Monika and her team felt that if they were able to build this group of
Innovation Coaches and Ambassadors in an effective way, they would in turn strengthen the other
pillars.
The Agile Network, in other words, was “the key piece to ensure the employees didn’t feel it was all
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hype,” said Julia Hitzbleck, one of the Innovation Directors who founded the network:
Noise can be easily made, but you need action to drive change – you need people
from the countries to drive innovation where they need impact.
To build the network, Henning and Julia started conversations with the country group heads in early
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2016, introducing the concept of the Innovation Ambassador and asking them to nominate one person
who would be the central contact for innovation in the country. It had to be someone enthusiastic and
someone senior enough to make things happen. For example, Marin Odak was appointed Innovation
Ambassador after working for five years heading the IT function in Zagreb, Croatia.
The ambassadors then worked with HR and their line managers to find people to become Innovation
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Coaches. Marin observed:
My challenge has been getting the coaches. I appoint them, but their managers have
sometimes been reluctant until they saw that other people were doing the same. One
year later, the situation has improved a lot and employees even nominate themselves.
For Marin it was natural that the Innovation Coaches volunteered:
Ambassadors promote the role of Innovation Coach internally and people know that
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it will be something in addition to their usual role. But they also know the benefits and
fun it brings, so it’s a quid pro quo. It’s important to be honest about what’s in the role
and what they get.

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The Innovation Coaches were expected to play a multi-faceted role; for example fostering an
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innovation mindset, contributing ideas, networking with a variety of stakeholders, building visibility and
learning new skills in innovation thinking. Monika Lessl noted:
Before, there was no one you could go to if you wanted to drive innovation. Now it’s
clear where to go for help. For example, say someone now wants to optimise a
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process, she can go to the Innovation Coach and this coach can help her. Often, the
coach helps to clarify the challenge, the problem she wants to solve. Then the Coach
helps to generate new ideas on how to solve the challenge. The Innovation
Ambassador then helps out to make sure that the idea also fits it in.
Monika’s team realised that the Innovation Coaches would need some training to make them effective,
so during 2016 a three-day training programme (‘Innovation Coach Onboarding’) was offered to help
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them work in a structured way. Using the external partner SIT (described above), 600 Innovation
Coaches were trained in around 12 months, working in cohorts of roughly 20 people. Nurit Cohen, one
of the SIT facilitators, explained:
SIT helps find new ways to look at things. We need a little bit of external help to look
at things differently. It helps with the fear of looking at a blank sheet of paper and
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having no idea on where to start to innovate; therefore SIT provides a number of tools
to look at problems in different ways.
Once they had been through this training, Innovation Coaches were invited to run ‘fast sessions’
themselves to apply their learning and help others get up to speed in the techniques.
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Fast sessions
A fast session was a short and structured workshop held with the problem owner and four to six people
focused on generating ideas and solutions to a specific business problem. The intention was to have
around 2,500 fast sessions in the company by the end of 2017, which would equate to having around
12,500 people connected through the agile network. Topics for fast sessions ranged from coming up
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with a new name to how to sell a product that wasn’t selling, how to shorten a long process, and new
thoughts for a marketing campaign. Nicolas Limbach, working in procurement in Germany, often
helped facilitate fast sessions:
As soon as someone tells me that he has a fast session running and asks whether I
can help, I make sure to make time. Assisting is not as time-consuming as it is for
the person running the session, because he is making all the preparation before and
after. When I get to the fast session, the Innovation Coach running it explains what
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the objective is, what methodology we are going to use, what he wants from me and
how can I help.

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For example, in one session the procurement team tried to find ways of working in innovative ways in
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the future and to make sure that Bayer got its fair share of the innovation capabilities of the supplier.
For this, the problem owner and the Innovation Coach invited different participants, including the
supplier. Nicolas felt that running the sessions was easy:
We explained to participants what we were going to do, what the expectations were
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and how the SIT process worked, trying to keep the participants within the topic we
were running and the method we were using. It felt like I was a shepherd, standing
outside and directing them. That was really the only challenge as they were really
eager to start the discussion and do the session.
In the case mentioned above, two teams spent about an hour discussing the problem and sketched
out potential solutions. One group was very detailed, even suggestion ways of implementing their
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solution; the other was more focused on the big picture. Some sessions had a larger group of
volunteers, so they used a second Innovation Coach and broke into two for the brainstorming part of
the session. Nicolas reflected on the value of the fast sessions:
The key challenge was simply getting started, because people were not aware of
these fast sessions. At the beginning they were very uncertain about what to do. If
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we tried one tool, say subtraction – to take something out of a pre-existing process –
people didn’t feel comfortable. I work with lots of Germans and they question why
they should take something out of the process.
After the workshop the Innovation Coach would have a debrief session with the problem owner to
summarise the session’s results, share learnings and impressions and advise on next steps. He or
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she would offer support on the process to implement the ideas shared. Finally, Innovation Coaches
were encouraged to document the fast sessions and share the outcome with others, although this was
not always done. Julia Hitzbleck said, “as of mid-2017, the reporting rate is increasing a lot because
at the beginning we weren´t really enforcing it”.
By the end of 2017, over 2,500 fast sessions had been conducted worldwide and Innovation Coaches
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were experiencing the usefulness of these sessions to foster innovative ideas among different
departments. For example, Alana Feldman, an Innovation Coach who worked in digital merchandising
in the US, noted:
In one fast session that I conducted we used subtraction to imagine what in-store
retail displays could look like. We really wanted to think differently here, so we
decided to subtract something really important: the product itself. With no product on
display, there could be room for more messaging. With no product on display, it could
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be any shape or size – it could even hang from the ceiling! By thinking about this

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absurd and creative idea, it really allowed us to break that fixed thinking and think
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outside the box on the retail environment.
Bilyana Vasileva, an Innovation Coach who worked in digital marketing in Bulgaria, recalled her
experience:
One of our first innovation fast sessions was with people from Crop Science,
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Pharmaceuticals and Consumer Health and it was very interesting how a process
can be divided into these tiny little details that can be very easily removed because
they are not really needed in the process – they don’t really bring any value. And
because of this meeting, now Crop Science is working together with the logistics
department to simplify our processes.
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Coaches who showed good aptitude and commitment in these fast sessions were given further support.
Julia Hitzbleck explained:
Advanced coach trainings would be offered to those Innovation Coaches who ran at
least 10 fast sessions as they need to be experienced in the basic SIT methods.
These advanced sessions sought to deepen understanding of the tools and cover additional themes,
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such as customer focus through personal and ethnographic research and prototyping.
Evaluating progress and plotting the next steps

By early 2018 Monika and part of her team had been working on the Innovation Agenda for almost
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three years, starting from strategy development to implementation. It was clear that a lot of progress
had been made around the four enablers. The team pulled together the following summary data:
 Inspire: 5,000 people had been engaged in innovation events. Twenty countries hosted
innovation days and 35,000 people were using the Youniverse portal.
 Learn: 5,000 people had taken part in webinars and innovation training, 600 coaches had
been trained in Systematic Inventive Thinking and more than 1,000 people had attended a
No
‘leading innovation’ seminar.

 Collaborate: WeSolve had 36,000 registered users and since its formation 5,000 ideas had
been generated to address 250 challenges. During 2017 the Catalyst fund received 120
applications and 11 winners were now in the incubation phase of development.
 Connect: There were 80 Innovation Ambassadors and 650 Innovation Coaches across 70
countries. The engagement level in this community was more than 80%.
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There were also some external indicators of success. Bayer was consistently rated in the Top 50 Most
Innovative Companies in the World by the Boston Consulting Group 3 (a measure based on external

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measures of performance) and was ranked #16 in learning excellence by Learning! 1004. Bayer was
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also ranked #1 Innovation Company in Colombia because of all the “network activities and reputation
built around innovation”.
There was an ongoing challenge from the network of coaches and ambassadors. Some coaches felt
they needed greater formal recognition for their efforts because they weren’t able to carve out enough
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time from their ‘day job’ to push the Innovation Agenda.
Other coaches were looking for better central support. One said:
You don’t know which platform needs to be used. You just try and see what works.
Marin Odak, an Innovation Ambassador, commented:
yo
This year was good, but let’s see how next year will be. Expectations rise and it’s
going to be important to keep momentum.
Sustaining the momentum of the last few years was likely to be a challenge, especially because so
many people were doing innovation as a side activity. One member of the central team commented:
We have a wide variation in the engagement levels, correlating with the level of
support of senior leaders in the respective functions and organisations.
op
Monika saw 2018 as a transition year:
The backbone has been completed – we now need to move on to phase II. This
means making the framework sustainable, further growing our innovation capabilities
and expanding the innovation network to an entire ecosystem. We also have to focus
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on the business impact and showcase the results we are generating.

No
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Appendix 1: Systematic Inventive Thinking tools 5
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SIT, which stands for Systematic Inventive Thinking, was developed in Israel in the 1990s, derived
from TRIZ (Russian acronym for Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch or Theory of Inventive
Problem Solving), which had been invented by Genrich Altshuller in the Soviet Union in 1946.6 SIT
defines five thinking tools that facilitate innovation.
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Subtraction The idea here is to eliminate an essential component from a product and find usages for
the newly created product (without the removed component).
The underlying reason under this tool is that people naturally add features in order to innovate, but
this approach hardly ever leads to breakthroughs. However, by eliminating components, it allows for
creative solutions to fulfil the missing component’s function.
yo
An example is package-free supermarkets, which sell products in bulk (fruits, vegetables, cereal,
grains, etc) and without packaging. By eliminating a fundamental element in the products (packaging),
customers control the quantities they buy and distributors make savings in logistics.
Task unification The idea is to assign a new and additional task to an existing resource. This is
particularly useful when resources are constrained. One example is a Philips pacifier, which includes
a digital thermometer inside. While a baby sucks the pacifier, a gauge in the teat measures the baby’s
op
temperature and displays it on a screen.
Another example is ReCaptcha, a system used in many websites to verify that the user is human and
not a robot. Users are given two words to type; once entered, they are granted access to the website.
One of the words is already known and is used to verify the user is human; the other word is taken
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from a non-digitised text. This way users are helping digitise thousands of words from printed pages
at no cost.
Division This tool is used to reconsider different structures, either at the product or component level.
The idea is to divide the product and/or its components and rearrange them to form a new product. It
adds degrees of freedom, allowing flexibility regarding its structure and more pieces to consider when
innovating. While it can be used on products, it was often used with processes.
No
An example can be found in remote check-ins, where the check-in step is moved upstream in the
process. Previously users had to arrive at the airport, stand in line, check in, go through security, etc.
Thanks to mobile check-ins, they can now check in at any location and save time.
Multiplication Here, additional copies of a component of the same type are added. The idea is to
transcend a change in quantity to achieve a qualitative change. This is the opposite of Subtraction,
since instead of subtracting from a product, additions are made. However, as additions are constrained
Do
to elements of the product that already exist, it allows finding of creative solutions.

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An example is the sterile insect technique. Releasing large amounts of sterile male insects in an
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infected area causes wild females to mate with the sterilised males and produce no offspring, thereby
reducing the population of the next generation. Subsequent releases further reduce the population of
each generation.
Attribute dependency The principle here is creating and dissolving dependencies between variables
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of a product. An example is SmartLid, where the lid changes colour based on the liquid’s temperature,
informing the consumer of the temperature of the drink.
Pink Ladies Taxi is another example. This taxi service uses only female drivers and drives only female
passengers. The service offered is a dependency between the gender of the driver and that of the
passenger, non-existent in other taxi services.
yo
Using the tools
In a typical training session, the Innovation Coaches were exposed to all these techniques and given
suggestions on how to get the most out of them. For example, an introductory exercise concerned
finding find examples of successful innovation in different areas: products, services, business models
and processes. (see Exhibit 8). Participants had to position one successful example (such as Airbnb
op
or Nespresso) among the categories. Another exercise was called Function Follows Form, based on
the work of Drew Boyd 7. This involved starting with a concept that at first glance might seem worthless,
and then manipulating it to come up with a functional use for it.
The rest of the training involved the participants learning the different thinking tools that SIT had
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developed and running mock fast sessions so that they could start running real sessions as soon as
they returned to their offices. The facilitators explained:
These tools have different uses and Innovation Coaches will learn when to use which
with their experience. For example, Division is very useful with processes, but
Subtraction shakes participants, therefore it might be best to start with division as it’s
easier, but if the session allows and the coach wants to be bold, he or she could try
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Subtraction.
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Exhibit 1a: Bayer Group structure in 2015 8
os
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yo
op
Exhibit 1b: Bayer Group structure in 2016
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No
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Exhibit 2: Timeline of selected activities in Bayer appearing in the case
Time Event
October 2010 Marijn Dekkers appointed Chairman of the Board (CEO)
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Bayer Group Leadership Circle (GLC) attended a workshop on
March 2012
innovation led by HBS Professor Stefan Thomke
December 2012 WeSolve started as a project
February 2014 Kemal Malik appointed to the Board of Management
yo
May 2014 WeSolve launched
December 2014 Innovation strategy work started
June 2015 Innovation strategy work completed

op
August 2015 Innovation strategy work presented to the Board and approved
November 2015 Innovation agenda started
May 2016 Werner Baumann appointed Chairman of the Board (CEO)

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May 2016 Innovation Ambassadors nominated and onboardings started
June 2016 Innovation Coach trainings started
April 2016 WeSolve 2.0
February 2017 Catalyst Fund set up

No
May 2017 Advanced Innovation Coach trainings

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Exhibit 3: Bayer innovation enablers
os
rP
Exhibit 4: YOUniverse yo
op
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No
Do

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Exhibit 5: Innovation Days generic structure
rP
yo
op
Exhibit 6: Photo contest
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No
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Exhibit 7: Catalyst Fund
os
rP
yo
op
Exhibit 8: Examples of innovation in different areas
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No
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References and Endnotes
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1 www.hyve.net/en/bayer-innovation-day/
2 Kotter, J. How the most innovative companies capitalize on today’s rapid-fire strategic challenges-and
still make their numbers. Harvard business review 90.11 (2012): 43-58.
3 www.bcgperspectives.com/content/interactive/innovation_growth_most_innovative_companies_
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interactive_guide/
4 Applicants were evaluated across three criteria: Collaborative Strategies’ Collaboration Index, Darden
School’s Learning Culture Index and overall organizational performance. Accolades are awarded in four
categories of excellence: innovation, culture, performance and collaboration. Bayer was recognised for
excellence in the role of learning and development in creating an innovation culture.
5 Innovation Coach’s Guide, Bayer and SIT.
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6 www.triz.co.uk/what
7 http://drewboyd.com/tag/function-follows-form/
8 www.annualreport2015.bayer.com/management-report-annexes/fundamental-information-about-the-
group/bayer-at-a-glance/corporate-structure.html
op
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No
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Bayer’s Innovation Agenda:

We face exponentially increasing opportunities and we need to keep pace.

who reported to Board member Kemal Malik:

We have deliberately taken a systemic approach – to make innovation the

© 2018 London Business School

to tackle. They identified four main areas to work on:

 Communicate to position Bayer as an innovation leader in life sciences;

© 2018 London Business School

trust. These were subsequently rolled out across the company.

© 2018 London Business School

We recognise the huge challenge here, trying to transform a 150-year-old corporation.

© 2018 London Business School

Indonesia, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico and others.

© 2018 London Business School

After reviewing a number of options, we chose three core methodologies to drive

(See Appendix 1 for more details of the methodology).

process that was simpler and lower cost.

© 2018 London Business School

3. Intrapreneurship: The CATALYST programme was created in 2017 to support internal

© 2018 London Business School

© 2018 London Business School

Coaches. Marin observed:

For Marin it was natural that the Innovation Coaches volunteered:

© 2018 London Business School

© 2018 London Business School

© 2018 London Business School

Evaluating progress and plotting the next steps

‘leading innovation’ seminar.

© 2018 London Business School

Marin Odak, an Innovation Ambassador, commented:

on the business impact and showcase the results we are generating.

© 2018 London Business School

© 2018 London Business School

© 2018 London Business School

© 2018 London Business School

October 2010 Marijn Dekkers appointed Chairman of the Board (CEO)

December 2012 WeSolve started as a project

February 2014 Kemal Malik appointed to the Board of Management

December 2014 Innovation strategy work started

June 2015 Innovation strategy work completed

November 2015 Innovation agenda started

May 2016 Werner Baumann appointed Chairman of the Board (CEO)

May 2016 Innovation Ambassadors nominated and onboardings started

June 2016 Innovation Coach trainings started

April 2016 WeSolve 2.0

February 2017 Catalyst Fund set up

May 2017 Advanced Innovation Coach trainings

© 2018 London Business School

© 2018 London Business School

© 2018 London Business School

© 2018 London Business School

© 2018 London Business School

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