BASF Launches Year-Long,
Global Tour to Boost Co-Creation
BASF has announced its Creator Space
tour, a year-long, global event series aiming to address the challenges of smart energy, food and urban living. The first stop,
in Mumbai, India, took place January 16-
23 with a focus on water sustainability.
The tour is part of BASF’s global co-creation program, Creator Space. Led
by local, interdisciplinary, internal and
external teams from areas such as architecture, art, design, science, government,
technology and sustainability, each city
stop in the Creator Space tour will explore a locally relevant topic. Following
the first stop in Mumbai, the tour will
move to Shanghai, New York, São
Paulo, Barcelona and Ludwigshafen.
Topics will range from sustainable consumption, to housing of the future, to
intelligent solutions along the energy
value chain. The Creator Space tour stop
in Mumbai took place at Chhatrapati
Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya
(CSMVS), formerly the Prince of Wales
Museum of Western India.
“The 150-year history of BASF shows
that chemistry is an enabler for new
ideas and solutions. In our anniversary
year more than ever, we are connecting
people and ideas to make meaningful
contributions to society in accordance
with our corporate purpose: ‘We create
chemistry for a sustainable future,’” said
Sanjeev Gandhi, member of the Board of
Executive Directors, BASF SE.
Access to clean water is one of the
most pressing issues in the rapidly grow-
ing metropolis of Mumbai. Almost a fifth
of the world’s population lives in India,
but the country has access to only four
percent of the world’s fresh water re-
sources. Ideas about how to improve wa-
ter accessibility, water quality and policy
and behavior will be developed in cus-
tomer workshops, jamming sessions with
employees and the public. At the Creator
Space tour in Mumbai, more than 250
water experts, business professionals,
NGOs, academia and interested citizens
with different perspectives and expertise
discussed solutions to this question and
other important challenges.
Sessions at Creator Space Mumbai
included a variety of activities, with
diverse groups of participants being
invited, ranging from business and
academia to government, NGOs and
society in general.
MWV to Separate Specialty
Chemicals Business
MeadWestvaco Corporation’s board of
directors has approved a plan to fully
separate its Specialty Chemicals business from the rest of the company. The
separation is expected to be executed
by means of a tax-free spinoff of the
Specialty Chemicals business to MWV
shareholders, resulting in two independent, publicly traded companies. The
spinoff is expected to be completed by
the end of 2015. MWV remains open to
other value-creating alternatives for the
Specialty Chemicals business throughout
this process.
MWV expects to receive cash from
the spinoff that will be used primarily
to pay down debt to maintain MWV’s
investment grade credit rating. MWV
expects to continue to pay a strong dividend, with the final rate to be determined
post-separation. The company also will
continue to look for opportunities to return capital to shareholders.
Dow Presents Education
Grants to Advance STEM
Education Platforms
From the 270 submissions for the
Dow STEMtheGAP Summer Teacher
Challenge, 25 teachers were selected to
each receive a grant from Dow to ad-
vance their STEM education platforms
in the classroom. Introduced in the
spring of 2014, Dow’s STEMtheGAP
initiative encourages educators within
the U.S. to voice their concerns on sci-
ence, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) education, and
propose solutions to help improve the
country’s STEM education crisis. The
Summer Challenge winners were chosen
by a panel of judges from The Center for
Science Teacher Learning for their out-
standing ideas as well as for offering im-
portant feedback related to the current
and future states of STEM education.
Over 20 percent of The Summer
Challenge applicants identified lack of
funding and resources as a major gap in
STEM education, with another 20 percent identifying difficulties implementing more “hand on” education as major
challenges. While these gaps exist, our
winning teachers also provided several
solutions to help advance STEM education. These solutions include establishing
a STEM curriculum that connects upper
and lower grades, forming partnerships
with local businesses to develop students’
real-world application skills, creating interdisciplinary and project-based lessons
that encourage more hands-on learning
and engaging in exploratory methods of
education.
Established as a three-phase program, the Dow STEMtheGAP Teacher
Challenge has awarded 25 grants each in
the spring and summer, and will award
another 50 grants in the fall, for a total
of 100 grants distributed to teachers for
2014. The submission period for Fall
Challenge entries ended October 31; winners will be announced in January 2015.
Michelman Announces
Organizational Changes
Michelman has introduced what it
calls “an improved organizational
structure” consisting of three Strategic
Business Groups.
“The new structure will help
Michelman better anticipate and serve
its customers’ needs by driving collaboration between its experienced industry
focused business teams - now fully integrated into the Strategic Business Groups
