Blog 4 – Business Model Analysis Report
Novozymes
Give
me a brief description of the company:
Novozymes
history started in 1921 where people discovered how to extract insulin from
animals for human use. In 1925 Harald and Thorvald Pedersen founded Novo
Terapeutisk Laboratorium. That lead to the first factory in 1935 and in 1947 Svend
Frederiksen discovered a way of extracting both insulin and enzymes from the
same pancreas, which lead to the first patent. When Novo reached year 1974
there shares got on the Copenhagen stock exchange and they where the first
Scandinavian firm to get on New York stock exchange in 1981. Novo and Nordisk
merged and became Novo Nordisk in 1989. In 2000 Novo Nordisk got split into
three independent companies: Novo Nordisk A/S, Novozymes A/S and Novo A/S.
Novozymes is
a biotech company with headquarters in Denmark. They have 5,800 employees and
6,000 patents. Novozymes market share in the global marked was 47% in 2011.
There focus is enzyme production and the core business is divided into 3 different areas: industrial enzymes, microorganisms, and biopolymers. The industrial enzymes are used in household care enzymes, food and beverage enzymes, bioenergy and feed enzymes, and other technical enzymes. Microorganism is used for institutional and household cleaning, wastewater treatment, aquaculture, and bioagriculture. The last area is biopolymers which is mostly used for pharmaceutical and biomedical use.
Novozymes is further world leader in bioinnovation, which means that they believe that biotechnology can make everyday products sustainably.
Why
is this company interesting to you?
There are 2 reasons why I choose Novozymes. First
Denmark is known for there medical center called Medicon Valley, it is one of
the leading research places for cancer, diabetes, neuroscience, inflammation
and infectious diseases. Medicon Valley started because of the interplay
between businesses, hospitals, universities, and public research institutions.
Because all the different intermediaries are located closely there is knowledge
sharing, innovation, and an interest for intelligent and bright workers to
come. I find it really inspiring to work in an environment that is constantly
changing and where you have to be the first with the new ideas to be able to
compete. It also gives a security that if you find your job getting boring you
just have to cross the street to find a new firm.
The second reason I have chosen Novozymes is because
I have always liked biology, but even though I truly considered studying
medicine or biology it just didn’t feel like the right way for me to go. Where
business was something I could se doing and working with, but at the same time
I still miss biology. If I could work in a place where you find new and
sustainably ways to make our planet work I would be inspired every day I went
to work. I find it truly inspiring how you can make the nature, in and around
us, to become something to use in different everyday products and use it in a
sustainably way.
Who
are the 3 to 4 primary customer segments that are most important or that you
are most interested in analyzing in this report?
One of the biggest costumers are the ones who uses
enzymes in there production of food and beverage this include a lot of
different companies. One of the uses of enzymes are in the production of beer based on
barley at Harboe, a Danish brewery company. Novozymes are also selling enzymes
to baking companies who uses the enzymes to ensure that the bread keeps being
soft. These companies are very dependent on the enzymes to be delivered
precisely because they work with product that gets to old fast and need to be
handled with care.
Another big costumer segment is the ones who use
microorganism for cleaning. Novozymes has for example replaced oil based
ingredients and non renewables with biological enzymes and microbial agents so
the high performance cleaning solutions can be maintained for the costumers but
at the same time it helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and conserve water.
This costumer segment has a lot of restrictions and therefore it means a lot if
they can decrease the pollutions that follow hard chemicals.
Pharmaceutical and biomedical costumers are also
an important group. Novozymes is the world leader in recombinant products and
technologies supplied to medical devices and drug delivery market.
One of the stakeholders that also could be
categorized under costumers NGO’s.
Novozymes have recently worked together with World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature
to map where biosolutions could eliminate the first billion tons of CO2. I really find these consumers interesting because they also need the newest knowledge about what happens in the biological world if they want to change anything. So while they sometime is working against the big firms, they also needs them.
Please be
sure to cite any sources that you use here.
Websites:
Medicon valley:
(visit: 10/7/13)
Novozymes:
(visit: 10/7/13)
Novozymes Annuels repport
2012:
(visit: 10/8/13)
Børsen:
visit: 10/9/13)
Hi Emma. Good job here. I think one of the biggest challenges with a B2B type firm like this is going to be articulating in non-technical terms what the value proposition is for some of these segments. I’m not so sure it clearly comes out at this point. In portions where it does, its very focused on the tactical and the immediate, i.e beer companies literally need enzymes to make beer. Try thinking about how Novozymes products help their customers better serve the end user.
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