Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) named ex-Chevron executive Patricia Woertz as CEO, making it the largest publicly traded firm in the U.S. that is headed by a woman. At Chevron, Patricia was in charge of the oil company’s “downstream” operations, including its refining, marketing, lubricant, supply and trading businesses. After a 29-year stint at Chevron, she becomes only the 8th CEO in the 104-year history of ADM.

The real story, though, doesn’t involve the “woman CEO” angle or the “end of the Andreas dynasty at ADM” angle. As the Wall Street Journal (sorry, no link available) points out, Patricia Woertz is an “energy-savvy outsider” who will spearhead the company’s push into groundbreaking new products:

Archer Daniels Midland, placing a big bet on the business of turning farm crops into fuel and chemicals, shattered company tradition by appointing a woman and energy-savvy outsider as its new CEO… Ms. Woertz is accustomed to the role of pioneer. Throughout her professional career, she has never taken a job previously held by a woman. [,..]

In picking Ms. Woertz, who has done business in such far-flung places as Kazakhstan and Venezuela, ADM is luring someone who knows how to turn a raw commodity into hundreds of products and can talk about it with Wall Street analysts as well as foreign dignitaries… A big part of Ms. Woertz’s assignment is to lead ADM’s push into transforming crops into more profitable industrial products, most of which would be alternatives to goods now made from petroleum.”

Tags: PatriciaWoertz ADM innovator

The BBC is stirring up discussion across the Internet with its decision to adopt an innovative new strategy for its online operations, effectively turning its Website into a public service version of MySpace.com. According to The Guardian, that means more user-generated content in the form of blogs and videos and a brand new online architecture based around the three concepts of “share,” “find,” and “play.” With that in mind, the BBC also plans to put its entire programme catalogue online (starting tomorrow) for the first time in written archive form, as an “experimental prototype”, and rebrand MyBBCPlayer as BBC iPlayer. Here are the details of the plans that were laid out by the BBC’s director of new media and technology:

“Ashley Highfield’s presentation, Beyond Broadcast, outlined a three-pronged approach to refocus all future BBC digital output and services around three concepts - “share”, “find” and “play”. He said the philosophy of “share” would be at the heart of what he dubbed bbc.co.uk 2.0. Mr Highfield said the share concept would allow users to “create your own space and to build bbc.co.uk around you”, encouraging them to launch ther own blogs and post home videos on the site. The BBC is also running a competition to revamp the bbc.co.uk 2.0 website, asking the public to redesign the homepage to “exploit the fuctionality and usability of services such as Flickr, YouTube, Technorati and Wikipedia”.

At the heart of the play concept is MyBBCPlayer, which will allow the public to download and view BBC programming online and was today rebranded as BBC iPlayer. “BBC iPlayer is going to offer catch-up television up to seven days after transmission,” said Mr Highfield. “At any time you will be able to download any programme from the eight BBC channels and watch it on your PC and, we hope, move it across to your TV set or down to your mobile phone to watch it when you want.”

As might be imagined, some of the biggest names in Internet punditry are taking a crack at dissecting this announcement from the BBC:

The Sun Never Sets on the Beeb [Buzz Machine]
Beeb 2.0 [GigaOm]

An obituary for mass media [NevilleHobson.com]
bbc.co.uk 2.0 [Richard MacManus Read/WriteWeb]

Tags: BBC MySpace innovation

[image: Journalism.co.uk]

Ever wonder how the Airbus A380, the largest passenger airliner in the world, is built? Screenhead points to a nifty time-lapse video showing a “bouncing baby 610,200 pound superjumbo Airbus A380 coming into the world.” The entire video showing the production process is all of seven minutes long and features its own music track.

Anyway, the Airbus website has a great summary of the technological innovation behind the superjumbo airliner:

The A380 embodies 30 years of Airbus experience in applying intelligent innovation to its new products. The result is an airliner at the top of the scale in terms of efficiency, profitability and operational effectiveness. By incorporating the latest advances in structures and materials, the A380 offers a direct operating cost per passenger that is 15 per cent lower than the competing large airliner. Reliability and maintainability will be further increased through the use of new technologies such as an enhanced onboard central maintenance system and variable frequency generators (which simplify the large aircraft’s electrical generation network). New-generation engines, combined with an advanced wing and landing gear design, will make the A380 significantly quieter than today’s largest airliner – enabling the very large aircraft to meet strict local regulations at airports around the world.

[image: Wikipedia]

The new rising star of the FORTUNE 500 appears to be Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, credited by the Wall Street Journal with “managing one of the most adroit corporate turnarounds since Louis Gerstner rescued IBM…” She’s the focus of the Monday “Boss Talk” column in the Wall Street Journal, where she discusses the amazing turnaround at Xerox. Ever since she took over in August 2001, she has been forced to make some tough choices when it came to cost-cutting, dealing with business partners and paring down debt. The results, though, have been phenomenal: the company has increased profits over the past four years, tripled its stock price and regained its lead in the high end of the copier marketplace by developing a number of innovative new products. Anyway, one of the most fascinating parts of the “Boss Talk” interview was the part where Anne Mulcahy discusses the difficulty that large, entrenched companies like Xerox have in embracing disruptive technological change:

“This is the pain of technology transitions. You can either sit and wait like Kodak or Fuji Photo and fall off a cliff when it happens. Or you can migrate. We’re transitioning the light-lens [traditional copiers] out as quickly as possible. If you look at what that’s cost us, this company would have been growing for the last three years very nicely. It cost six points of growth in 2003; four points last year. It will cost us probably a point and a half this year. So it’s going away… It’s always more attractive to stay in the old technology from a profit standpoint. Always. But you’ll be going out of business.”

You can read more about Anne Mulcahy at ZDNet’s Between the Lines blog, which discusses a recent interview that Anne Mulcahy did with NPR.

Tags: AnneMulcahy Xerox innovation

[image: The Harbus Online]