Demanding innovation, promoting ideas – like Merck
The Innovation Award - a world-wide and group-wide prize for Merck employees - was initiated in 1998. Its purpose is to reward innovative achievements that play a key role in the development of new products, in increasing efficiency or in saving costs.
New ideas are honored
The Innovation Award is presented in recognition of the initiative, creativity and innovative achievements of Merck employees. The prize is not reserved solely for engineers and scientists. Indeed, it is open to all employees. As innovative ideas are often born within a team, the prize is also intended to promote teamwork.
The winner of the award is decided in two stages: first there are national competitions within the individual companies of the Merck Group. The national winners then take part in the competition for the international prize, which carries a prize money of 25,000 euros.
In addition to the "Corporate Innovation Award", since 2005 there have been three further subcategories in which prizes are likewise awarded:
- Entrepreneurial Thinking
- Customer Orientation
- Intercultural Cooperation
The prizes in these categories each carry a prize money of 10,000 euros.
Prizewinners in the Chemicals business
For its outstanding work in the development of liquid crystals, the Liquid Crystals division has been presented with the Merck Innovation Award. The sought-after prize was likewise won for development of the Chromolith® range of chromatographic columns. A Japanese team of researchers also received the award for the manufacture of Xirallic® effect pigments.
