Innovate or Perish: Managing the Enduring Technology Company in the Global Market

Case Story

The BOC Group is the world’s second largest producer and supplier of industrial gases on a global scale. Gases such as nitrogen, oxygen, and argon are produced by a cryogenic distillation process invented at the beginning of the century and constantly refined and optimized by incremental improvements by the six to eight major companies in this specialized industry. Industrial gases play an important role in most industrial processes. Whereas quality and purity of the delivered gases was a competitive factor early on, the battlefield among competing companies today is in manufacturing cost, distribution cost, and in the knowledge about the optimal use of the gases within the customer process or application.

In late 2000, the company was putting the final pieces in place to launch two new step-changing technologies. Each technology had been developed by highly specialized teams of material experts that had worked focused side by side for the prior five years. One team worked on a glass-melting technology for industrial glass furnaces, utilizing crown-fired oxygen combustion burners to increase the melting rate. Another team worked on a highly efficient liquid nitrogen freezer capable of freezing a hamburger patty within 42 seconds as compared to the current three to five minutes. The two teams worked at the same location, had their lunch at the same company cafeteria, and exchanged polite greetings when their paths crossed in the corporate corridors. They had no real incentives ...