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

Abstract

DuPont is one of the world’s leading chemical companies, and a major producer of oil, gasoline, and natural gas. 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). The company operates 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 operates 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 Is now in excess of US$60 billion and is 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.