Bayer is a life sciences company focused on Pharmaceuticals, Consumer Health and Crop Science. With operating sites in more than 90 countries, their success has always been based on excellence in R&D and bringing innovative solutions to customers.
Innovation fuels Bayer’s mission to shape the future of health and nutrition as they help overcome global challenges to feed and secure the health of a growing and aging population.
Today, the convergence of science and technology - combined with the potential to leverage data - is changing R&D in many ways. Tailored programs as well as collaborations across R&D are creating new value for Bayer and their customers.
Simon Maechling
Johan Botterman
Verena Herrmann
The Challenge
As a global company, Bayer seeks to leverage external innovation opportunities as a complement to its internal assets and capabilities.
Many excellent technologies from various innovation sources (startups, academia and companies) are identified in existing technology ecosystems and assessed for a potential fit to Bayer’s programs.
An appropriate knowledge management system provides a great opportunity to crowdsource external innovation from all over the world.
But to really use the full potential of this global scouting capabilities, some challenging questions must be tackled (a situation most large and decentralized firms are facing) including:
- How to achieve full transparency on external innovation opportunities throughout the organization?
- How to break down internal silos and facilitate cross-functional fertilization on partnering opportunities?
- How to operate with one face to the external world?
The Solution
To address this challenge, the External Innovation Sourcing team was looking for a software solution that would enable knowledge-sharing and transparency on interactions with external parties in a cross-functional, centralized and simple manner.
Bloomflow has been essential to help me with tracking my external deal flow and at the same time allows me to be transparent with all my colleagues within Bayer!
Simon Maechling / Innovation Manager at Bayer
Bayer selected Bloomflow to create a transparent and interactive one-stop-shop encompassing all interactions and activities with external parties with the goal of
- enabling transparency on interactions with external parties
- involving all employees for crowdsourcing of opportunities
- preserving confidentiality restrictions in the process