From May 21 to 23, 2017, over 280 employees holding key posts in the various departments of Sinochem Group and its various divisions gathered together in Beijing to attend the group's first annual executive conference.
Prior to the formal agenda, Chairman Frank Ning delivered a speech on the significance and necessity of opening the conference. As he pointed out, just as the world changes, so do the industry and the environment, which makes it necessary to attach greater importance to innovation than to anything else, including management methods and indexes. As Sinochem Group's business is undergoing a sea change in the fields of energy, chemical engineering, and agriculture, any change that occurs may either force Sinochem Group out of the competition or give it a new opportunity to participate, particularly in such links as production, trade, and logistics. It would be truly great if Sinochem Group could combine technological innovation with business model innovation. It is vital that Sinochem Group see all these changes clearly and participate actively, so that a seed planted today may grow into a big tree in the future, which is a question to which every Sinochem Group employee must give due consideration.
After Chairman Frank Ning's speech, Mr. Zhang Wei delivered a keynote speech, titled Foster Innovation in an All-Around Way, Force Change, Create a New Situation in Sinochem Group's Effort to Encourage Innovation, which focused on the original intention of the group's effort at innovation, its current status, and its future. In his speech, Mr. Zhang Wei discussed both the achievements and failings of Sinochem Group when it came to innovation, particularly in the four major areas of the portfolio of products, business model, technology, and management, and laid down the following requirements for Sinochem Group's effort to encourage innovation: First, Sinochem Group should free itself from old ideas so it may renovate its approach to business by applying innovative thinking; second, Sinochem Group should change the way it do things so its effort to introduce innovations may give a big boost to its industrial development; and third, Sinochem Group should coordinate all its actions and orient them toward the market and foster innovation in a practical manner.
Mr. Li Bin, Vice President of Sinochem Group delivered a report titled Be Confident, Make Thorough Preparations, Foster Innovation to Shape the Future, in which the current status of the effort at technological innovation in Sinochem Group and the issues related thereto were analyzed and a total of 60 incisive questions were raised as to how a technological innovation-driven business should behave, with a view to forcing every manager present at the meeting to do some introspection; the report also discussed what Sinochem Group would do in its effort to encourage innovation.
Mr. Dimitri de Vreeze, Member of the Board of Directors of Royal DSM, was invited to Share DSM’s experience of innovation and transformation. Moreover, 20 managers from Sinochem Group's various divisions and functional departments at group headquarters shared with the other participants their feelings about innovation.
In his closing remarks, Chairman Frank Ning stressed it is vital to integrate innovation into Sinochem’s employees’ way of thinking and working. He hoped what’s been achieved in this conference would be gradually normalized and put into practice, which will finally become a working philosophy and method utilized in daily work of all departments.
