CTO Straight Talk - Issue 1 - 24

Too often, there isn't a strong enough
collaboration between R&D and manufacturing.
And that leaves room for improvement whether
from a cost perspective, a quality perspective, a
yield perspective, or whatever else.

The second kind of collaborative innovation
has to do with finding the right innovative ideas
to work on. Here I make a strong distinction
between invention and innovation. Invention
for me is the act of creating something new.
Innovation comes in knowing how to develop
that idea so that it generates value for Baxter
and for patients.
So we partner with universities, start-ups,
and others that can supplement our own idea
generation and keep the product funnel filled.
Toward this end, we have strong partnerships
with a number of leading universities. On
an annual basis, we put out a request for
proposals and ask researchers there to submit
their work. We then have the opportunity to
fund the research programs we think are most
relevant for us, and, ultimately, bring them inhouse if appropriate.

Collaborating with Other
Internal Functions
Lastly, collaborative innovation must take
place within Baxter itself. There are numerous
examples, but the strongest one is in the area
of design transfer.
Too often, there isn't a strong enough
collaboration between R&D and manufacturing.

And that leaves room for improvement whether
from a cost perspective, a quality perspective,
a yield perspective, or whatever else. If a
suboptimal design gets to the manufacturing
floor, we would be left investing a substantial
amount of time, money, and resources to fix
it-all of which could have been avoided if we
had done more collaborative work up front
and gotten some expertise on how to bring our
design from lab scale to mass production.
It's not easy to get different teams to rethink
how they work together. But fortunately,
when I started here, Baxter had just assigned
a new head of global manufacturing, a
longtime Baxter executive who was open to a
collaborative approach.
Together we made a conscious decision to
work together. So, when people came to me
and said, "Well, you know those manufacturing
folks...," I would say, "Let's take a look at this
and make sure we don't have a design issue.
Let's get to the root cause and fix it together."
Similarly, my colleague in manufacturing
would say, "Hey, this isn't necessarily an R&D
problem. We need to look at this together."
While he committed to making sure that the
relevant resources would get involved early
from the design perspective, I signed up by
saying, "I understand you have a lot of things

CTO Straight Talk | 24
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CTO Straight Talk - Issue 1
