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Top Turkish Conglomerate Eczacıbaşı Awards Innovation Within Group

 Posted, June 18th, 2007

Eczacıbaşı Group, is a $2.6 billion in annual revenues health-care based industrial group and one of Turkey's top conglomerates (#68 on DS100 Ranking) involved in pharmaceuticals, building materials and consumer products. It organizes an annual Creativity and Innovation Awards for its 37 Companies rewarding innovation accross product development and process improvements. What is exemplary is that it is able to tie its innovation efforts to improved financial results.

Eczacıbaşı’s most creative companies in 2006 were recognized at the eighth Eczacıbaşı Creativity and Innovation Day held in Istanbul on 4 April 2007. The Grand Prize Winner of the day was Eczacıbaşı Building Materials, which submitted its “Splash-Free Urinal” project in the Most Creative Product/Service Category.

Ten companies entered 29 projects in this year’s event. Aside from Eczacıbaşı Building Materials, Eczacıbaşı Health Products won the “Most Creative Productivity Project” award, Eczacıbaşı-Baxter won the “Most Creative e-Transformation Project” award and Kanyon Management and Marketing won the “Most Creative Communication” award.

The 29 projects submitted this year contributed $ 12 million to the Eczacıbaşı Group; since 1999, when the competition started, a total of 144 projects have made a cumulative contribution of $ 82.5 million.

The annual Eczacıbaşı Creativity and Innovative Day, which took place this year on 4 April 2007 at the Lütfü Kırdar Convention and Exhibition Center, aims to establish an environment in its Group companies that encourages creativity and innovation and boosts the contribution of individual and team efforts to the strategic goals and business performance of their companies.

In his opening speech, Bülent Eczacıbaşı, Chairman of the Board of Eczacıbaşı Holding, said that the era had come when innovation itself required constant innovation and companies needed to approach innovation as innovators, and added, “No longer can we be satisfied with praising innovation, we need to be innovating continually. The way to achieve this is to remove the obstacles to creativity".

"This is what we are trying to do with the innovation strategy we are preparing to implement throughout the Eczacıbaşı Group. We all know well that “Those who do not have the courage to lose sight of the shore will never discover new lands.” (Andre Gide) For this reason, one of the most important aspects of our innovation management will be clearing the way for our business colleagues who have the ability to think differently.”

Recalling Dostoyevsky’s perception that “Innovators and men of genius have almost always been regarded as fools at the beginning (and very often at the end) of their careers”, Bülent Eczacıbaşı said, “We firmly believe that we need “fools” of this kind. And they shouldn’t constrain themselves; with 65 years of experience, Eczacıbaşı is well-placed to turn their energy into value.”

Bülent Eczacıbaşı’s speech was followed by a presentation by Daniel Pink, author of “A Whole New Mind” and “Free Agent Nation”, two best-sellers in the business category, and a regular consultant to CNN, CNBC, ABC and NPR on business and social trends.

Erdal Karamercan, President and CEO of the Eczacıbaşı Group, also made a presentation on innovation in the Eczacıbaşı Group, after which followed a panel on “Global Examples of Innovation /Design-Innovation-Culture”. Participating in this panel were Darrell Mann, Founder and President of Systematic Innovation; Dr. Gregg Bennett, General Manager of 3M Turkey; Süreyya Ciliv, CEO of Turkcell; Emilio Brambilla, Head of Marketing, Nokia Networks RN and Zafer Parlar, General Manager of Nike Turkey and South CEMEA.

Faruk Eczacıbaşı, Vice Chairman of Eczacıbaşı Holding gave the closing speech before the presentation of awards – the final event of the day.

Awards
In this year’s competition, 10 Group companies submitted 29 projects in four categories: Product/Service, Productivity, e-Transformation, and Communication.

Eczacıbaşı Building Materials’ “Splash-Free Urinal” project, which was awarded the “Most Creative Product/Service Project”, also received the Eczacıbaşı Creativity and Innovative Grand Prize.

This specially designed urinal prevents urine from splashing back on the user, thus providing more hygiene and comfort. Developed with the world-famous designer Ross Lovegrove for the İstanbul Collection, the urinal has been one of the collection’s fastest-selling products.

Kanyon Management and Marketing received the prize in the Most Creative Communication Project category for its Kanyon launch strategy, which successfully communicated the “Kanyon difference”, reoriented people’s shopping habits and created communities with the same values.

The Most Creative Productivity Project award went to Eczacıbaşı Health Products for its new packaging project for Alendronate. The Company altered the packaging of Alendronate 70 mg in such a way as to achieve savings of € 5 million over a period of five years.

Eczacıbaşı-Baxter Hospital Supply was the winner of the Most Creative e-Transformation Project Award with its EKLIPS self-service portal software. Developed in-house, this platform transfers manual workflows to an electronic environment and integrates work processes. The result has been an increase in productivity and a decline in process costs.

The Team Effort Award in the Quality category went to Eczacıbaşı Building Materials for its project to reduce casting errors in the Moen 73 faucet series. Eczacıbaşı Health Products won the Eczacıbaşı Cooperation Development Award for its successful collaboration with Helm AG since 1996 in developing and registering generic products.