Editorial
"Innovations Are Always in Demand"
Klaus Wucherer
Prof. Dr. Klaus Wucherer is a Member of the Corporate Executive Committee of Siemens AG and is, among other things, responsible for the top+ Business Excellence Program
Evenor especiallyin a difficult market environment, an old saying among savvy entrepreneurs remains valid: "Innovations are always in demand," whether as a tool for reducing costs or a means of increasing sales and achieving higher returns. Today, those who fail to launch the right new product at the right time will be punished on the market more severely than ever before. There are also additional challenges to be met, such as achieving a global presence while retaining the capacity to respond to local market demandsor responding to the pressures generated by up-and-coming firms from countries such as China, which not only operate with cost advantages, but also have highly educated and qualified workforces.
Siemens is in an excellent position to meet such challenges. Innovations have always been one of the foundations of our success and are therefore a core element of our corporate culture. Siemens invested 5.8 billion in research and development in business year 2002. Altogether, 53,100 men and women work directly on enhancing our innovative power, putting us at top positions of the patent rankings in Germany, Europe and the U.S.
Nevertheless, promoting innovation in a strategic manner and turning it into business success requires continual effort at all levels. This involves repeatedly asking oneself the following questions: Are we taking the right approaches to ensure that we not only recognize trends but also establish them? Are we sufficiently exploiting the synergies available to such a broad-based company? Are we using our resources efficiently? Is our project management organization effective enoughfrom the initial idea all the way to marketing? And, finally, are we developing a sufficient number of innovation-focused managers?
Siemens developed the Pictures of the Future method as a means of addressing such questionsas described in the October 2001 issue of this magazine. But that's not all. As part of our top+ Business Excellence Program, we are making use of a number of tested instruments for strengthening our innovative power, including top+ Trendsetting and top+ Innovation Benchmarking. The latter enables us to see how our own innovative ability measures up to that of our strongest competitors. With the help of "innovation radar," we can identify the potential for improvement and develop new approaches to solutionsfor example, in cross-Group cooperation, knowledge management, idea development and evaluation, as well as employee motivation and development.
In addition, we have extensive experience in establishing international networks, as illustrated by our partnership with Tsinghua University in Beijing. Finally, the articles in the ? Materials, ? Security and ? Healthcare segments of this issue clearly demonstrate that the measures described above have succeeded in ensuring that Siemens remains one of the world's leading innovators.