DuPont: Gaining the Benefits of Global Networks — from the Science Base to the Market Place

DuPont is one of the world’s leading chemical companies, and a major producer of oil, gasoline, natural gas and special materials. As a manufacturing and industrial marketing company based on technologies derived from the chemical, material, and biological sciences DuPont applies these to the development of high performance materials, specialty chemicals, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology-based products (Fig. III.1.1). In 1996 the company operated some 17 strategic business units from Agricultural Products, Automotive Products, and Conoco, to Nylon, „Dacron”, non-wovens, Specialty Chemicals and White Pigments with a portfolio of more than 2000 registered brands and trademarks (such as Teflon, Silverstone, Lycra, Stainmaster, Kevlar, Tyvek, Conoco, and Corian to name but a few). With 97,000 employees the company operated in every major market of the world. Sales in 1996 were US$ 43 billion; net income was more than US$ 3.6 billion. Market capitalization was in excess of US$ 60 billion and was expected to be US$ 80 billion by 2002 — the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of DuPont as a gunpowder and explosives company on the banks of the Brandywine Creek in Wilmington Delaware.