When Mr. McGuire told Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin in The Graduate that "I just want to say one word to you," and that word was "plastics," he could have been recommending a career at Dow Chemical. It was advice that Andrew Liveris, a new chemical-engineering graduate from Darwin, Australia, followed in 1976, when he joined Dow (DOW). The company produced mainly petrochemicals and the plastics created from them, and it was a good business. But by the time Liveris became Dow's CEO in 2004, that commodity chemical strategy no longer made sense. That's why Liveris, 57, has been turning Dow in a new direction, focusing on unique, innovative, high-margin products, such as recently introduced solar shingles. Dow makes them in Michigan, underscoring another of Liveris's major themes, the importance of U.S. manufacturing.
Read the full story here!
No comments:
Post a Comment