By Chad Holliday, Chairman of DuPont

When we first began partnering with NGOs at DuPont, we created a series we called “The Oval Table Dialogues.” The name came from the company logo – an oval. The Dialogues involved 10 key leaders at DuPont, alongside 10 individuals from various NGOs. The individuals from DuPont would present key business strategies. Each of the NGOs would then give us three ideas to improve those strategies from the perspective of their organization. We would then spend a day and a half working with the groups, determining how to incorporate the ideas of the NGOs into our business plans to make those plans stronger for all of our stakeholders, including our shareholders.

The first time we held a dialogue, business leaders inside our company were skeptical of what would result. They soon found that great things came out of it. We learned very quickly that by engaging with NGOs, we really could develop better plans and strategies.

We also recognized that NGO engagement could assist us in introducing new technologies to the marketplace. DuPont is a science company. Biotechnology is an important science for DuPont. Biotechnology breaks down into three forms: human health, plant science and bio-based materials.

The plant health part came first for us, and the logic from a scientist’s standpoint is that we’ve been breeding plants forever—we put A and B together and take what comes out and see what we can learn from that. With biotechnology you can design the outcome much more precisely and not require quite so
much luck. So, from the scientist’s mind, biotechnology rather than traditional breeding is a much more controlled technique.

But for many people, it doesn’t come out that way. We learned we need multiple perspectives to develop new biotechnology sciences in the most ethical way. To accomplish that, we created a biotechnology advisory panel.

DuPont formed, in February 2000, an independent panel to guide our actions, help us consider and address important issues, and guide and challenge us in the development, testing and commercialization of new products based on biotechnology. The panel doesn’t just consist of scientists. We currently have a priest on the panel and we’ve had ethicists too. Those board members review everything we’re doing around biotech
and they issue an independent report on a regular basis which is posted on the DuPont website.

As CEO, I would join the advisory panel for roughly two thirds of their meetings. I would refrain from attending a portion of the meeting to prevent constricting conversations and sharing of perspectives. I still see former panel members from time to time and the new CEO is doing the same thing. We’ve also had our
entire biotech advisory panel meet with our board of directors.

We also take their advice into account with our daily operations. If we are approaching some new biotech opportunity, we will take into account where the advisory panel stands on the subject, including where their warnings and cautions are coming from.

There are so many things that we’ve learned from these advisory panels that it is hard to account. It’s not just from a scientific perspective. What these individuals bring to the discussion is the cultural perceptions and maybe the second and third quarter potential impacts of something that we might not have thought of, all while maintaining ethical relevance to our operations. Just to hear the discussion that is created from such an intelligent, diverse group prevents us from becoming too constricted inside our own shell and our own topics.

We have taken similar positions with our other scientific activities. In the realm of nanotechnology, we partnered with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). We wanted to create a safety framework around nanotechnology. We and the EDF, together over a long period of time, developed a pretty extensive framework – over 100 pages of very specific information – explaining how to evaluate a nano item. That framework is significantly stronger because we published it in cooperation with the EDF. For example, the EDF brought up an entirely different series of questions because their stakeholders are different.

Of course, just like any other component of business, companies need to partner with the right NGOs. I think the first advice is to pick the groups that are constructively trying to find creative solutions. There are some groups out there that are just “anti.” While you shouldn’t ignore these groups, those interested in collaborating to develop solutions are better for initial projects. There are a great number of NGOs in this category.

We’re going through some pretty stressful times in what some people call “the great recession,” and we’re not out of it yet. It’s more important than ever that company leadership reinforces the importance of ethics in a time like this. My experience tells me if you just go silent, people could misread that believing ethics are not quite as important right now. One of the best ways to reinforce this idea is by partnering with, and listening to, the right NGOs and sharing learnings with your broader organization.