Our latest case study is the first about our work with BASF, the world’s biggest chemical producer. It’s also very relevant to the AI, digitisation, and future strategy discussions we have with many other clients.
Today, BASF continues to invest heavily in R&D, innovation infrastructure and new technologies as it pursues its mission of creating a sustainable future through chemistry. But understanding which digital and AI technologies can deliver the greatest value remains a challenge for many organisations operating in complex global environments. And that’s where we came in: as the case study describes, we worked together to investigate how new digital tools and AI could accelerate research and improve collaboration across the business.
We’ve put the case elsewhere that AI is transformative but not a complete solution. For this problem, we stayed true to our usual philosophy: pairing assessments of AI and technical potential with human judgement and a systematic process.
We started by mapping relevant R&D activities across BASF’s business units and identifying the key pain points slowing research and collaboration down. Against that picture, we evaluated a wide range of digital and AI technologies for their potential to address those specific pain points, before narrowing our focus to five priority technology classes. For each, we set out concrete next steps — recommendations deliberately built on knowledge and expertise BASF already had in-house, rather than starting from scratch.
Throughout, we were careful to go beyond pure technical capability and need, to also consider the organisational structure and culture that determine whether digitalisation actually takes hold. That combination helped BASF connect learnings across business units that hadn’t previously been linked, and build a clear, actionable roadmap aligned with its internal strategy.
Kathrin Holtzmann, one of thought leaders in AI, said: “Innovation work with AI is a fantastic chance for us to deliver impact: it’s a powerful tool and we can ensure it is pointed at the right problems for maximum leverage.“
Learn more about how we approached the work here: Accelerating R&D with AI and digital technologies
