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What does it take to transform a legacy chemical business into a cutting-edge innovation engine? Mike Finelli, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at Syensqo (formerly Solvay), shares his journey from mailroom to C-suite and outlines how the company is leveraging sustainability, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence to drive growth and solve some of the world's toughest challenges. With a 160-year heritage and a fresh start after splitting from Solvay, Syensqo’s focus spans advanced materials for aerospace, automotive, healthcare, electronics, water filtration, and more.
Host Victoria Meyer and Mike discuss building a culture where AI becomes a daily tool for everyone, the company’s research priorities, and the launch of customer innovation centers designed to foster collaborative, customer-centric solutions. They also address leading through change—both technological and organizational—offering candid insights on managing culture shifts, developing future leaders, and the role of purpose-driven innovation in attracting and retaining talent in the chemical industry.
In this week's episode, Victoria and Mike talk about:
- From Mailroom to C-Suite: Mike Finelli’s journey highlights the power of a growth mindset in chemicals.
- How Syensqo balances tradition with a culture of innovation after its split from Solvay.
- Syensqo puts sustainability at the core of R&D, tackling global challenges with biotech and renewables.
- Building an AI-driven organization where generative tools accelerate discovery and everyday productivity.
- Driving innovation by partnering closely with customers in globally connected labs for faster solutions.
Killer Quote: "Our job is to turn molecules into money... and we do that by solving our customers' biggest challenges. You can't do that if you're not interacting with the customer." —Mike Finelli
Creators and Guests
What is The Chemical Show: Where Leaders Talk Business?
Looking to lead, grow, and stay ahead in the trillion-dollar global chemical industry? The Chemical Show - the #1 business podcast for the chemical industry - is your go-to resource for leadership insights, business strategies, and real-world lessons from the executives shaping the future of chemicals. Grow your knowledge, your network, and your impact.
Each week, you'll hear from executives from across the industry - from Fortune 50 to midsize to startups. You’ll hear how they're tacking today's challenges and opportunities, their origin story (what got them here!), how you can take and apply these lessons and insights to your own business and career.
We talk:
- Business Transformation
- Innovation
- Digitization of business
- Strategy
- Supply Chain
- and so much more
Founder and host Victoria King Meyer is an expert interviewer - who brings out the best in each guest. She gained her industry experience at leading companies, including Shell, LyondellBasell and Clariant. Today, she is a high-performance coach and advisor to business leaders in chemicals and energy, as well as the host of The Chemical Show podcast, and founder of The Chemical Summit.
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Victoria Meyer:
Welcome back to the Chemical show, where leaders talk business. Today I am speaking with Mike Finnelli, who is the Chief technology and Innovation Officer. It's a long title. We'll just call him the CTIO for Syensqo. Mike leads a group of 2000 Syensqo explorers and change makers across the group's key strategic platforms, including battery materials, green hydrogen and renewable materials, and biotechnology. So all very innovative areas, while also guiding commercial activities, operations, capital planning, partnerships and alliances with four business incubators. So Mike is a busy guy. Super excited that he could find time to talk with me today.
Victoria Meyer:
And basically, to put it succinctly, Mike's in charge of this innovation engine for Syensqo and we're going to be talking about that and more. Mike, welcome to the Chemical Show.
Mike Finelli:
Thanks, Victoria. Glad to be here.
Victoria Meyer:
Really glad to have you. Let's start with your origin story. What got you interested in chemicals and polymers and ultimately brought you to where you are@Syensqo
Mike Finelli:
So it's kind of, it's kind of funny story. So, you know, since I was a kid, I've always loved science, right? I remember, you know, as a kid, any science book I could get my hands on, it didn't matter. I would love to read it. I had a little chemistry set. Well, actually, it wasn't that little. It was about five foot across. I would do all kinds of chemical experiments when I was probably 10 years old, I would set things on fire. My parents would get upset.
Mike Finelli:
So I've always had this passion around science and passion around chemistry and technology. But how I got into this industry was kind of by chance. I wasn't planning on it, honestly. I went to college. I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I graduated. I graduated in the early 90s. The job market was really tight. And a friend of my father's, who my father was a hairdresser and he cut hair.
Mike Finelli:
He cut this guy's hair for decades. He was a headhunter. And he calls me up and he said, hey, Mike, I got a great opportunity for you with this chemical company. It's in the mailroom. It's a summer job in the mailroom, right? And I said, ed, you know, I got a college degree. I'm not working in the mailroom. I can't do it right. And he said, okay.
Mike Finelli:
You know, at the end of the summer, he came back and he said, hey, they made it a permanent job, so it's a full time mailroom job. And I said, okay, Ed. Nothing's changed. I said, great. It's Full time work, but I still don't want to work in the mailroom. But he kept trying to. He kept telling me how great a company it was and that this is exciting and they're doing new stuff and you know, I like chemistry. And I said, okay, I said, I'll tell you what, I'll come in for an interview.
Mike Finelli:
And here I am. Keep in mind, I was 22 year old kid, right? And I said, I'll come in for an interview and if they're willing to pay for an mba. And he laughed and he said, mike, come on. Because no one pays for a male boy to get an mba. I said, ed, that's my deal. So he went to the VP of human resources and the VP said, I'll tell you what, he goes, I want to meet this guy. If I hire him, I'll pay for him to get an mba. So I went in for the interview, the interview went well, they hired me and I started my MBA within a few months of joining the company.
Victoria Meyer:
That's an amazing, bold story.
Mike Finelli:
Well, that's, that's how I started. I was, I was the mailboy, literally the mailboy bringing mail to all the executives. And I just, I worked my way up. You know, when I was in there, we went through a big restructuring at the beginning. And so there was a lot of people that were leaving and I would get all this industry mail that would come in and they would tell me to throw it out. And I didn't. I threw a lot of it, but I kept it. And all they did was read the industry magazines.
Mike Finelli:
And when I had questions, I went to the executives and asked them, what does this mean? Or what does that mean? And I think that helped me build a relationship. People realized I didn't want to go and be in the mailroom my whole life. So, you know, I was also a mailboy getting an mba. So it kind of sent the message. And I moved out of the mailroom within probably four or five months. I got into customer service, I moved into sales, and I moved throughout the whole company. You know, every few years. I moved to Europe in, in 2006.
Mike Finelli:
I became the president of our specialty polymers GBU in 2018. And then when the company split, the Solvay Solvay split into Syensqo and Solvay, I became the ctio. So I've had this really exciting career and it's never been 32 years and I've never been bored. I've never had a boring day.
Victoria Meyer:
I love this. I mean, from mailboy to C suite. There is a headline right there. But, but also I think it's just this, it demonstrates this idea of a growth mindset, right? You're starting someplace, but you're still, you're reading like, okay, well I could throw this away, but this looks interesting. Let me read and learn and discuss and grow. And that of course is central to your career and what you do today with Syensqo and innovation, I'm sure.
Mike Finelli:
Absolutely.
Victoria Meyer:
Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about Syensqo and for I've told you this and I don't mind telling everyone for the first year I mispronounced the name because I didn't understand what it was. But I think we're in this place where people know who Science Co is maybe. So tell us more.
Mike Finelli:
Starting to get there.
Victoria Meyer:
So give us a little overview on Syensqo.
Mike Finelli:
Yeah, so, you know, it's, we're, we're almost two years old now, so we're not, we're not quite at two years. End of this year we'll hit, hit two years and we're, you know, about 13,000 employees. We have manufacturing sites, 60 manuf manufacturing sites around the world. As you said earlier, 2000 research and development scientists. So you might say, how does a two year old company end up with, you know, that, that size organization? Right. We have 160 year history. So as I mentioned earlier, we were part of the Solvay Group and back at the end of 2023, we split the company into two. So Solvi was a large multinational, I'd say diversified chemical company.
Mike Finelli:
So we had commodities, we had specialties. And over the previous four or five years, the company was fixing the portfolio and divesting certain parts of it and getting it ready for this split. And we got to a point where we had achieved our previous growth strategy early and we were prepared to now split the company into a commodity business, which remains Solvay. And then this new company that was the specialty business which became Syensqo. So, you know, pretty exciting, you know, journey, if you will. And now, you know, I could sit here and I could explain to you all the wonderful products that we have, right? But that would take hours. I'd be happy to do it, but I don't think we have the time in the podcast. But I would tell you we have two legs, right? So we have a performance and care leg and then we have a materials leg.
Mike Finelli:
The easiest way to explain it would be to say if it flies, we're on. It doesn't matter whether we're talking commercial Aircraft. Whether we're talking spacecraft, urban air mobility, the new air taxis, or defense aircraft, everything that flies for the last 30, 40 years has had a Science Co material on it. If it drives.
Victoria Meyer:
That's amazing.
Mike Finelli:
Thank you.
Victoria Meyer:
And I didn't know that.
Mike Finelli:
Yeah. We have one of the largest composite businesses, and it's not just our composites business, but we have lubricants, we have elastomers, we have polymeric materials that are all over the plane, coatings, you name it, we're in it. And I was saying, if it drives, we're in it. Right. So almost every car on the road, about 80% of the cars on the road have a Science Co material in them. And again, it doesn't matter whether it's an ICE engine, whether it's a hybrid vehicle, a fuel cell vehicle, or a full battery electric vehicle, Our materials make them lighter, make them more fuel efficient. Whether it's electricity or petroleum, doesn't matter. We make them more fuel efficient, we make them lighter, we make them safer.
Mike Finelli:
In the space of health care, our materials actually save lives. So I'll give you an example. Hemodialysis. So patients that have kidney failure have to have their blood filtered every few days. The membrane is made out of a Science Co material. And there's millions of patients around the world that would not be able to survive without Science co's technology. Water filtration. Hundreds of millions of people are drinking clean water that are made by our membranes that are in reverse osmosis systems, taking salt water and turning them into potable water that you can drink.
Mike Finelli:
Electronics. Right. We love our mobile devices, we love our laptops, we love our phones, we love our tablets. AI. We'll talk about AI I hope at some point in this interview.
Victoria Meyer:
Absolutely.
Mike Finelli:
AI and quantum computing wouldn't be possible without semiconductors. And you cannot make a semiconductor without science codes and materials. That's really cool. And this morning in the shower, if you use the shampoo or conditioner, probably 25% of the population used a Science go material that was biodegradable by design. We make surfactants, we make materials for cosmetics, materials for hair care, and we focus on being biodegradable and being sustainable.
Victoria Meyer:
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, and I would say in my career I probably intersected with Solvay and now Science Co more in the care space. Right. So surfactants, et cetera. It intersected with the work I did at Shell and Clarient. But this whole material space is so fascinating and ever evolving.
Mike Finelli:
Absolutely, yeah.
Victoria Meyer:
So you and Science Co have been on quite a transformation journey. And you've talked a little bit about the 160-year-old legacy, splitting the company into two, becoming the new Syensqo. What's been the biggest challenges that you as a leader have faced?
Mike Finelli:
So I would say that, you know, like you said, we have this 160-year-old history going back to Ernest Solvey and one of the challenges, you know, but we also wanted to be this new company, you know, that was forward thinking and not, you know, 160 year old thinking. So how do you balance this really rich and important history with having to become this new company and different? You know, we said from the very beginning, if Science Co is just a smaller version of Solvay, then we failed. Right. So we have to shift the culture. And, you know, culture is not an easy thing to shift, but it also didn't want to shift the culture and not have a connection to this legacy that is of, you know, Ernest Solvay was a pioneer, he was an innovator, you know, so how do you keep that and still become this new entity and this new company? So I'd say that has been the biggest challenge and I think we've managed that well because again, we keep innovation and science at the core of our technology and at the core of our culture, which comes from Ernest Solvay because like I said, he was an innovator and a pioneer. So I think we've been able to do that nicely and we are projecting and going for the future with sustainable materials and, you know, going in new directions.
Victoria Meyer:
Yeah, that's really great. And we might circle around and talk about that later because this whole idea of innovation and sustainability is also attractive to new employees, which helps keep revitalizing and evolving the culture.
Mike Finelli:
It's part of our purpose. Right. So, I mean, this is something that Elam, our CEO, has brought to us was we really have become a purpose driven organization. She has taught us how to be profitable and sustainable. And I think that's core and really, as you said, important to our current employees and future employees having that purpose driven around being a sustainable company. And in the chemical industry that's sometimes hard to do. Right. Because a lot of people think the chemical industry was part of the problem.
Mike Finelli:
Actually, I believe complete opposite. I think the chemical industry is absolutely part of the solution. And this is the industry that will solve most of the humankind's biggest challenges.
Victoria Meyer:
I agree, I agree. And even if you just talk about something like water filtration and clean water, which is essential. Right. We would all agree that clean water is essential for a healthy population across the globe. It's not happening without materials and products from the chemical industry.
Mike Finelli:
100%.
Victoria Meyer:
Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about research, innovation and technology. We what are Syensqo's top priorities? So you're obviously on this quest to keep evolving and innovating and growing. So what does that look like?
Mike Finelli:
So our top priorities in research, as I already touched on a little bit, sustainability is at the forefront. It's part of our DNA, it's part of our purpose. So everything that we're doing in research, we look at it through a sustainability lens. So we have this, what we call spm, a sustainable portfolio matrix. Every one of our RNI projects. And right now we've got about 350 projects going on across the group. Everyone goes through this gauntlet of a study before we start the project to make sure that it's aligned with sustainability trends. Are we reducing carbon footprint? Are we reducing waste? I mean either in our own operations or helping our customers do that.
Mike Finelli:
So are we developing products that are going to help the planet? And if they are, then we call that a sustainable solution. And I'm really excited, happy to say that we've been progressing on this. We've got about 85% of our RNI portfolio is aligned as a sustainable solution. So we're talking about biotechnology, we're looking at new ways to do chemistry. So one of the things is if you can use renewable resources, right, then you can have something more sustainable. Well, one of the challenges is in the chemical industry a lot of the stuff we have comes from the earth, right? We have to extract minerals, we have to extract raw materials. What we're doing now is we're actually using biotechnology. So we have a lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts that is designing microorganisms.
Mike Finelli:
So it could be a bacteria, it could be an enzyme, a protein. And then we're using those microorganisms to do chemistry to make a raw material that we could use then in our process to replace something that we had to mine from the Earth. Earth. So now it's a renewable technology. And if you think about what organisms can do, I mean it's quite mind boggling. And I'll use an example. Think of it like a chicken, right? You feed a chicken corn, actually you could feed a chicken almost anything and it can make an egg. And if you were to study the material of what that egg is made out of, it is extremely strong, it is extremely thin.
Mike Finelli:
If you were to try to Dupe. I'm not even sure we can duplicate that in a laboratory. But if you were to do that on an industrial scale, it would probably take you 15, 20 steps. You, plant would probably cover multiple, you know, dozens of acres and be very, you know, time consuming and expensive. A chicken does it with corn or some other kind of food, and it does it all inside its body. That's why when we say biotechnology, that's what we're talking about. Now, obviously we're talking about simple chemistry coming out of microorganisms, but that's, that's the concept. Biological organisms can do chemistry better than we can in a plant.
Victoria Meyer:
Yeah, I love that. And I think you're right. I mean, it's kind of one of these miracles of life and science. And I think there's a whole lot of art to science that we still are trying to understand and evolve. You know, Mike, one of the bits and it's an interesting dichotomy I feel like we've got going on because I think, as you say, biotechnology is the future. We are learning so much, we're evolving. We're able to create new products with fewer resources or different resources. And yet at times, let's talk about, for instance, in the food value chain, everybody's like, ooh, bioengineering is bad.
Victoria Meyer:
And yet we also know this is one of the ways that we've fed the planet because I think you and I are probably of similar ages and at one point we were all going to starve because population was going to outpace food food. And yet through ingenuity, we figured this out.
Mike Finelli:
How do you know science go helped do that? By the way, we have seed coatings that improve the. It's a polymeric material that you coat the seed that helps germination so the seed doesn't die before it germinates. We actually protect the environments, we protect the, the seed and, and have a much higher germination rate with using a science co material.
Victoria Meyer:
Yeah, you guys are obviously balancing this and it's needed this, this biotechnology is needed for modern life.
Mike Finelli:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
Victoria Meyer:
Great. So one of the other things we started talking about, and I said, I hope we talk about this and absolutely. Because I know you're really passionate about it, is AI so harnessing AI is obviously a major focus area for you. You've talked about building an AI culture and some of the experimentations you're doing. What does AI mean for you and for science company?
Mike Finelli:
Just at the simplest level, it's a great question. I mean, so you Know, AI for us is, like I said, we're trying to build an AI culture. So if I think about what does it mean for us, and we've been coining this phrase across the group, you know, AI needs to be for everyone, everywhere, every day. So it's not, you know, I think AI is probably, you know, science and development and research. It's probably one of the best applications for AI. But we want to have this as a culture across the entire science co group. So it's everywhere, every day, for everyone in the world of science. This is for us, as I said, very, very exciting.
Mike Finelli:
We've been using AI, and we started this journey about 18 months ago. We've used AI for almost a decade. But when I say 18 months, our journey, it's really about the latest and greatest AI. I'm talking about generative AI, talking about agentic AI. So about 18 months ago, we started down this path, and we are now using AI to develop new polymers with unique properties. We're generating hypothetical polymers from a pool of millions and millions of potential molecules. And I think that's the real key, right? So in a normal approach, without AI in science, the first thing you would do is you would go to the literature, you do the research to understand what's the state of the art out there today, what's already been published, what's already been patented. And just that study alone could take you months and months to go through all of this and read all this.
Mike Finelli:
We can do that now, a bibliographic search in minutes, right? We could study everything that's out there and get it in a concise report in minutes, right? Then the next step you would do is you say, okay, I've got a problem I'm trying to solve for one of my customers, okay? And you come up with possible synthesis routes and things. You know, how you could approach that, solving that problem. But you have to choose which variables you're going to, you know, mess around. You can have, you know, 100 variables that you could play with, but if you tried to do that, it would take you 10 years to go through all of the possible combinations. But with AI, you can do that. You can actually study all the possible combinations and narrow it down to the hundred experiments that you want to run. And now instead of doing, you know, months or years of experiments, you can do it in weeks to months. So that's, I mean, that's how AI is, is really helping us get there.
Mike Finelli:
The other thing we've done, which is, I'm sorry you had A question now.
Victoria Meyer:
Yeah, I was just going to ask, has there been any resistance to this? Because, you know, we've. I've had. You have conversations with people and they're like, ooh, AI is going to take my job. It's like, I don't think so. But how have you. How are you navigating this? Because it's a big change. Again, back to this whole change management and culture. It's a big shift.
Mike Finelli:
It is a very big shift. So, as I said, we're on a journey, and with the latest, greatest AI, we started about 18 months ago. But I would say, you know, in the beginning, we faced a very similar curve. Anytime you try to change something in a big way, you find this, this, this Gaussian curve where you got about, you know, out of 10 people, you got about two people that love it and they're pulling. They're like, I got it, let's go. And they want it faster. On the other end of the spectrum, you got a couple of people who are fighting it. And I saw the same thing.
Mike Finelli:
I had scientists sending me emails about how AI is never going to work for chemistry. It's not. It's not ready, it's not going to happen. Right. And in the middle, you've got the majority of your people, you know, 60% of your people who are curious, they're interested, but they're skeptical. They want proof. Why is this worth my time? Is this going to replace my job? You know, I like it, but are we going down a path where I'm going to lose my job? Right. So I could tell you, over the last nine months, 10 months, we have seen a complete shift.
Mike Finelli:
I've got nobody that I could tell fighting anymore, nobody's sending me emails anymore that this isn't going to work. In fact, majority of the people in the middle are now pulling for it. And so I would say that's evidence that we're creating this culture. And I would say the bigger challenge right now is scaling. How do we get this scaled to a size that we can get it to all of our people instead of just a select few, Right? So that's where we're at right now. It's been a shift and it is a journey, right?
Victoria Meyer:
Yeah, absolutely. And the scaling piece is interesting because I think I had this conversation recently with folks at the Chemical Summit that about the need for experimentation, that we need to allow people to experiment with new technologies, with AI, et cetera. But then scaling scalability is tough. And, you know, our IT departments are built on Everybody must have the same platform all the time, which can inhibit some of this experimentation and growth. But then at the same time, figuring out how to get it in the right hands of the people is big.
Mike Finelli:
So you're absolutely right. And we, so we ran into the same thing, right? I mean, so, you know, it could be a bottleneck sometimes because they want one thing that fits all. But what we did was 18 months ago, we said, okay, we got to be different. We're going to pull this out of the IT group. The IT group has to be involved to make sure we're secure, to make sure it's integrated into our systems. But the team, we built a team called ScienceCo AI. And this team is a group of AI, but also some scientists. So we've got a team of people that manage and look at and facilitate the AI strategy across the group.
Mike Finelli:
So that was like the first step that we did. And then what this team did, very quickly, they came out with what was called Sci GPT. So Sai GPT is ScienceCo's own AI chatbot that gave us a chance to put AI in the hands of all 13,000 employees in a very inexpensive way. And what you said before experiment, that was part of the cultural building, right? We did this over 18. Well, it was probably about a year ago, a year and a half ago.
Victoria Meyer:
Which is pretty fast. Although AI is moving fast, but that's still fast.
Mike Finelli:
Yeah, it was. But you know, at the time, there were people in the company that hadn't even looked at AI yet. They hadn't used Chat GPT, they hadn't used anything. And the problem with, you know, people using the external tools like ChatGPT, which, I mean, these are all great tools, but you can't have them use company data on that open sourced Chat GPT. So we needed something in house where we could let our people experiment and learn and build that culture in a safe environment. So that's where saigpt came. And then we took it to the next level. We said, okay, what's next? We said, okay, how could we use Generative AI to help us in our commercial organization? So we created scigrow.
Mike Finelli:
Right? Scigrow would think of it as a sales buddy, and it's able to go out and look at all the markets and draw some insights from our markets. Long story short, with the sales buddy, our commercial front line has found over $140 million of opportunities that we didn't know existed before. Now we have to turn that into actual business. But you got to start with the.
Victoria Meyer:
Lead yeah, that's big. That's great.
Mike Finelli:
Super exciting. And we recently, with the support of Microsoft, so we've been partnering a lot with Microsoft. We've created the Research buddy. Right. So in a similar way, we've got our scientists now have access to a research buddy that helps them do the literature searches, helps them design their experiments. These are real life tools that our teams are using now. And we've also now embarked on a new program with Microsoft. We are their first chemical partner, their primary partner in the chemical space for what they call Microsoft Discovery.
Mike Finelli:
And this is a new platform to do chemistry and to do science. Not just chemistry, it's doing all kinds of science. But this tool will help us create new molecules, it'll help us create new chemical pathways and it'll design, let's put it this way, I see this as a way to augment and improve the capabilities of our scientists. You said earlier people are worried about losing their jobs. I've said this clearly in the webcast to all 2000 of our scientists. That is not our objective. Our objective is to give you tools to help you do even more than you can do today to augment your abilities. And we've got, some of our scientists have been using this and they will tell you very clearly they feel like they have superpowers, you know, compared to what they could do before, the speed at which they could move now is just mind boggling.
Victoria Meyer:
So.
Mike Finelli:
And we're not, we're not finished. We've got still quite a bit of our journey to go.
Victoria Meyer:
Yeah, I love that. And I think I like the word augmentation because I think that's the right approach to this and that leading companies are using AI to augment what they're doing. And even that the, as you describe it, creating a sales buddy or a science buddy, I mean it's, it's a team, it becomes part of the team as opposed to something different.
Mike Finelli:
Exactly. Yeah.
Victoria Meyer:
So, so I know that, you know, you got innovation's not just about technology. You're doing a lot obviously with technology, with AI, et cetera. And yet I also know you guys are working really closely with your customers to, in doing customer centric innovation. How do you do this? What's your focus as you collaborate with customers?
Mike Finelli:
So you know, look, our job is to turn molecules into money, right? I mean that's what we do. And we do that by solving our customers biggest challenges. So you can't do that if you're not interacting with the customer. And I would tell you, if you want your Research to be spot on. You want to solve the problem your customer has. You've got to be intimate with the customer. You've got to be collaborative. Right up from the get go, many, many times I've seen, you know, we develop something and then we didn't fully understand the customer's needs.
Mike Finelli:
So we got to go back to the drawing board and do it again. Right. We've been moving away from that. So by being more customer centric, we're hitting the target the first time instead of having to go through some iterate process, throwing samples over the fence to the customer. And the way we do that is that we have built what we call our customer innovation centers. So Alpharetta, where I'm calling from, we're having the conversation from right now. This is one of our Starship sites. It's a customer innovation center.
Mike Finelli:
And when I say customer innovation center, it's not just a building where we have laboratories, it's where we have the entire cycle of the development under one roof, right. So that we're fast. So on the other side of this building, we've got five or six pilot reactors that can make all the different types of polymers that we have. You make a new polymer, you walk down the hallway 30 yards and you could turn that polymer into a part. You could turn that polymer into a thermoplastic composite tape. So we have equipment here that actually then turns it into a material that the customer would use. We could then walk down the other side of the building and turn that tape into a part and then take it into a development lab, customer development lab, and then test it in the way the customer would use it. Our customers don't want to be our laboratories.
Mike Finelli:
They want us to bring them finished solutions. So we bring the customers in and they spend time with us in our customer development labs and we test the materials in the finished form right there with them. It's been pretty effective. And we've also started bringing AI into this and we've been digitally connecting our facilities, right? So not every facility around the world has the exact same capabilities. Some are specialized in different areas. So for example, what we just did in Shanghai, we have a big R and D center in Shanghai. We've created a room where we have digital screens all around the room and there's all kinds of cameras. So we can bring a customer into our lab and shift Shanghai and they can digitally connect with our lab in say, Balate, Italy.
Mike Finelli:
And when you walk in that room, you feel like you're in the lab and the People are on the screens, you walk around and they could work with the customer from 5,000 miles away. So, you know, this is something new that we've done. We're going to start doing more of this to connect all of our labs digitally. So you don't have to be at our center. You could be close to where, you know, you could join one of our centers close to where the customers are. So I think this has been very successful for us and is a way that we really connect with our customers.
Victoria Meyer:
That's great. What's the customer response? What do your customers say about this?
Mike Finelli:
They've been blown away. Right? I mean, I can tell you at least, I mean, from this digital connection, they've been blown away. I mean, they come in there and we've got some of the biggest customers, the biggest brands out there. They come in and they just, they've never seen it before. Right. So they're quite impressed. And the ultimate thing is, are we getting business? And the answer is yes. So, you know, it's effective.
Victoria Meyer:
Yeah. Awesome. So let's, as we kind of get close to the end here, let's talk a little bit about leadership. So it was recently announced that Science Co is having a CEO change that Your longtime CEO Ilham Kadri is stepping down end of this year to be replaced by Mike Radisich. Leadership transitions can be tough, right? I mean, these are critical times for company and organization. How are you in the organization preparing for this transition?
Mike Finelli:
So the good news is, you know, this has been under. It's been under the works for quite some time, for some months. Right. You know, there was a thorough search internally and externally for a replacement. They selected Mike Radasich, who was an internal candidate. Mike's been with the company for over a decade. He came from an acquisition. He's been managing different parts of our business.
Mike Finelli:
He's been part of all of the leadership team meetings that we have, and he's been helping, contributing to the strategy. So when you have somebody from the outside, they come in, they want to change everything and put their fingerprint on it. Mike's already been part of who we are today. So I think one, from a leadership change standpoint, I think it's going to be much smoother than if we had an external candidate. You know, I think, you know, the fact that this was not short notice, it was planned. I think we're going to be, you know, it's going to be, you know, smooth transition. Of course, Mike's a new CEO. He's going to put his fingerprint on things.
Mike Finelli:
But, you know, I think, you know, people know him, he's got great credibility in the organization. So, you know, honestly, I think, you know, we'll be able to do this in a pretty smooth way.
Victoria Meyer:
Awesome. That's great. Okay, so two final questions, and these are questions with advice. So my first question is, you're obviously deep into this AI transformation and creating an AI culture for Syensqo. What advice would you give to other C suite business leaders about putting AI at the center of the company? How do they do this?
Mike Finelli:
So I, you know, it's not, not easy. I think the first thing that has to happen is you've got this type of change and it requires massive change, right? Mindset change, cultural change. It has to start at the top. If the CEO of the company is not pushing this is not driving this, it's probably not going to happen. Right. So I think that's your first step. If you're, if you're a C suite, you know, if you're a CEO of a company, if you're not, if you're on the fence, you're not going to get there. So find a way to get yourself there, right? That's the first thing.
Mike Finelli:
Then you've got to find the people in your organization who already have this mindset. And I can tell you, I mean, there are, like I said, there's a population in your company that is already there. They're pulling, find out who they are and get them to catalyze this, you know, across the group. Then I'd say the most important thing you got to do is then give them some tools that they can experiment, play with so they could start seeing the value of it. And you got to train them. It's not intuitive. You know, Chat GPT, for example, is not a replacement for Google. And in fact, I know OpenAI is pretty upset that that's what most people use it for.
Mike Finelli:
They use it to do Google searches that they would usually use Google, they now use ChatGPT. It's so much more powerful than that. So you need to learn how to prompt and you got to train your people a little bit on how to do that. And, and I'll tell you the other thing, what we did, a lot of our guys did, was just ask the GPT to teach us how to use GPT. And it's pretty simple, right? It's pretty cool. Yeah, you got to get the tools in their hands and then you got to show them how it's make bringing them value. Because if the employees don't find value in using the tool. It's not going to spread widely.
Mike Finelli:
Right. And if they see that value, they're going to be using it all across the boards. And then the hard part is you got to decide which route you're going to go as a company. The first steps, it's about just getting awareness on it. After that you got to decide, am I going to do this model by model, am I going to do something over here? And like, kind of like piecemeal, which is fine. But the real value comes when you do an end to end. But that now starts getting expensive, complicated and will take years. So you kind of have to, you know, figure out what your strategy is around AI.
Victoria Meyer:
Yeah. Great advice, great advice. Okay, so now I'm going to the other end of this, of our, or our industry, which is, you know, what's your advice to, to a young professional who's early in their career in the chemical industry and that wants to realize success, perhaps the success that you've realized. What's your advice?
Mike Finelli:
My advice would be, I think the, probably the most, and I would say this is for anybody at any point in their career, but especially when you're early in your career, you got to learn to be grounded and balanced. Now I've been fortunate, I've had the opportunity. Ilam Kadri has brought this team in and I've worked with them for the last five years. It's called Insight Principles. And what they do is they teach you how your mind works. That's all they do. They don't teach you tips and tricks and all this kind of, they just teach you how your mind works and it can only work one way. And everybody's mind has to work the exact same way.
Mike Finelli:
We go through life thinking. Most people live their entire lives thinking they live in an outside in world, when in fact you're living in an inside out world. And what I mean by outside in is the world happens, stuff goes on. You know, geopolitical things go on, stuff in the office goes on, stuff at your, at your home goes on. And most people believe that that whatever happened made you feel a certain way, made you feel happy, made you feel sad, made you feel angry. And that's not really what's happening. What's really happening is you're taking that input and your brain based on your programming we call it, right? So your experiences in your life are interpreting that and your feelings are coming from your own brain. So it's really inside out.
Mike Finelli:
And when you realize that, right when you catch that, you can turn it off. Right. And you recognize it takes a lot of practice, a lot of time. And there's a book out there if anybody's interested. And I don't make any commission on this, but it's called Invisible Power by Robin Sharbit and Ken Manning and Sandra Carr.
Victoria Meyer:
All right, I'll link to it for.
Mike Finelli:
People you can get on Amazon, I think it's $11, right? It's $11 well spent. And you learn that the stress in life is optional. And when you can get your brain to a grounded and balanced state where it's clear, the insights start popping. That's where the insight principles come from. And you let your brain do what it was designed to do, which is solve problems. And I brought this. I got a book for my kids. It's changed their lives already.
Mike Finelli:
They're young and they're entering the workforce, and I could see the maturity and the groundedness that my kids are approaching their jobs in. And it's quite impressive. I think if more people had this, I think the entire world would be an easier place to get along in.
Victoria Meyer:
Great, great advice. Awesome. Thank you for that. And, Mike, thanks for joining me today. This has been a great conversation. Conversation.
Mike Finelli:
I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you very much, Victoria.
Victoria Meyer:
Thank you. And thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Keep listening, keep following, keep sharing, and we will talk with you again soon.