Research, Development & Innovation
A combination of innovative capability and proximity to customers is a key success factor for Evonik and drives profitable growth. In our growth divisions - Specialty Additives, Animal Nutrition, Health & Care, and Smart Materials - we identify future-oriented innovation growth fields, which we use to achieve our ambitious targets.
Strategy and Management
Innovations play a key role in aligning Evonik systematically with sustainability and profitable growth. In this way, we are also helping our customers to achieve their own climate protection, circularity, and biodiversity objectives. Examples of our innovative contribution to a sustainable transformation are our membrane technologies and our lipid nanoparticles for modern mRNA vaccines.
Sustainability is integrated into the management of our innovation portfolio. The aim is to improve both our handprint and our footprint. Therefore, there are deliberate personnel overlaps between the research, development & innovation (RD&I) council and the sustainability council. We use strategic perspectives to allocate our research and development resources. These include an intensive sustainability assessment using the methodology that has become established for the sustainability analysis of our business. Idea to Profit (I2P®) is used to manage our R&D projects—from the idea through systematic development to profitable commercialization. In 2022, we included our Sustainability Focus Areas in this process for the first time.
Our innovative capability enables us to open up opportunities in new, future-oriented businesses in six innovation growth fields:
- Sustainable Nutrition
Establishing new products and services for sustainable nutrition of livestock and people
- Healthcare Solutions
Developing new materials for implants, as components of cell culture media, and for custom-tailored, innovative drug formulations
- Advanced Food Ingredients
Creating a portfolio of health-enhancing substances and nutritional supplements as a contribution to healthy nutrition
- Membranes
Extending SEPURAN® technology for efficient gas separation to further applications
- Cosmetic Solutions
Developing further products based on natural sources for cosmetics and sensorially optimized formulations for skincare products
- Additive Manufacturing
Developing products and technologies for additive manufacturing
Innovation
Our aim is to generate additional sales of over €1 billion with these innovation growth fields by 2025. We are making good progress towards this.
Creavis serves the Evonik Group as an innovation driver for resource-saving solutions with a perspective that goes beyond 2025. In this role, it develops transformative innovations beyond the product and market focus of the operational units. Creavis bundles its activities in three incubation clusters:
- The Defossilation cluster helps industries become less dependent on fossil raw materials by developing high-growth solutions that make a contribution to the transition to a circular, climate-neutral economy.
- The Life Sciences cluster focuses on novel concepts for resource-saving and sustainable food production for the world’s continuously growing population. Another focal area is preventing and curing diseases, especially as many people are living to an advanced age.
- Solutions Beyond Chemistry fosters traceable, secure, and circular value chains based on domain knowledge and data-based solutions. These increase the transparency, effectiveness, and sustainability of industrial systems.