Executive Speeches

Chad Holliday, Chairman and CEO, DuPont
As prepared for delivery
At the The Prince of Wales's Business & the Environment Programme
4th US Seminar
Aspen Wye River, Maryland
October 23, 2003

Let me begin by emphasizing that sustainable growth is the overall goal of our company. We define sustainable growth as creating value for society and our shareholders while reducing environmental footprint throughout the value chains in which we operate.

This objective is a natural outgrowth of the values we hold at our company and which every employee encounters on a daily basis. DuPont's core values are safety and health, environmental stewardship, ethics, and respect for people. They are all interlinked and together underpin the goal of sustainable growth that we have pursued consciously for five years.

The most vital fact about our core values is that each one of them requires individual and personal commitment to make them living values every day on the job rather than feel good values on a piece of paper or the company website.

I am personally committed to each of these values and during my time as CEO I have made it a special point to promote sustainability. It has been a centerpiece in each annual reports to shareholders since I have been chairman. I also accepted the chairmanship of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and during that time co-authored studies and a book on issues related to sustainability. Most of my talks before leading forums have dealt with sustainability in one way or another. This is a personal issue for me.

But it is also a fundamental business issue for DuPont. We certainly believe that if we work to achieve sustainable growth as we transform our company, we will be better environmental stewards. But we also believe our overall business will be less cyclical, grow faster, incorporate more knowledge content into our offerings, and achieve greater productivity. For us, sustainability is not just our corporate mission, it is also a business imperative for success in the 21st century.

The first step is to make sure that everyone in the company knows what we mean when we say that we intend to be a sustainable growth company. We believe that a 21st century sustainable growth company has specific attributes; which include:

Strong earnings and revenue growth, cash generation and margin/return on invested capital.

Customers and markets that seek "green"/sustainable products, product attributes and services like biodegradable, bio-derived, recycle-content, recyclability, etc. – today, in most cases, this is driven by current regulations or anticipation of future regulations.

Relatively low environmental/energy footprint and little to no issues sensitive to the public (toxic releases, materials that are persistence in the environment, materials that create climate impacts, etc.).

Renewable feedstocks and energy, and products that are "renewable" over time.

Increasing knowledge intensity – creating more value with knowledge and services, and less from materials and energy.

High perceived value by society, and relatively few or no society-sensitive issues (dioxins, climate impacts, etc.).

Business specific projects and programs to reach the growing populations of the emerging economies, particularly those in the middle and bottom of the economic pyramid.

Ongoing dialogues and relationships with external thought leaders in civil society to guide the business thinking, generate new ideas, develop new and creative partnerships, etc.

Obviously not every business in a company as large and complex as ours encompasses all those attributes. The first challenge is to understand what sustainable growth means for each of our businesses.

To do that, we ask each business unit to do a self-assessment using the attributes of a sustainable growth company that I just outlined. Each business makes a subjective assessment of where they believe they currently fit on a scale of one to five, with five being the highest level of sustainability. One of our corporate officers who has experience in this area is available to help each business with this assessment if requested.

What emerges from this is a pretty clear idea of a business's current level of overall sustainability, and where the primary strengths and voids are. (In case you're wondering, we average about a "3" for all attributes, total company.) The goal of the exercise is not to grade a business. Rather it is to get the business focused on these sustainability parameters and where they might make improvements because the self-assessment is used as part of the business's strategy review with the Office of the Chief Executive.

A business can figure out pretty fast where it has the most potential to contribute to the overall sustainable growth of the company. It can determine if it has a trajectory carrying it in that direction. Against parameters where a business scores itself low, it has the opportunity to consider whether everything possible is being done to make a contribution in that area.

However, we are comfortable with the idea of differentiation in this as in other areas of business management. Strategies to move towards sustainable growth in DuPont Coatings and Color Technologies may look very different from strategies in DuPont Agriculture and Nutrition, or DuPont Safety and Protection.

There are certain non-negotiables – for example, our goal of zero for injuries, illnesses, major incidents, waste and emissions applies to all businesses regardless of where they operate in the world. Any variance from zero is scrutinized and improvement is expected. But how you go about minimizing footprint and growing sustainably will vary across businesses.

This process also challenges a business to look beyond internal metrics and try to understand the external impact of your business, which after all is really what sustainability is all about.

This leads to the second concrete step we are taking, which is to build a greater awareness within our businesses of the societal value their products and services create. We feel this is important to not only energize our employees, but to also create new ideas for business growth.

For example, we want to be aware of the numbers of people fed and children nourished in the world because of Pioneer seeds and Solae™ soy products in a similar way that we keep track of how many police officers lives have been saved by Kevlar® vests. We need to track the lives saved by Nomex®, Butacite® and other products that use our materials, then look for ways to grow our business by saving more lives. Other examples are the energy saved with Tyvek® homewrap™ and the improvement in agricultural productivity while reducing chemical inputs following the introduction of sulfonylurea herbicides.

Such a focus will add a new dimension to understanding the value we create for society, and it will help our employees engage not only their minds but also their hearts when they work for sustainable growth.

We at DuPont are determined to be the most successful and competitive science company in the 21st century world. But we also want all our stakeholders to wake up every morning and say 'the world is a better place today because there is a DuPont.' We want our employees and everyone associated with the company to understand that our mission of sustainable growth involves the pursuit of a noble purpose while growing profitably.