Global Alliances and Partnerships

Dr. Nat: What globalizations and partnerships has Boeing entered into for the sake of promoting innovation and has Boeing’s rival Airbus done similar things? What are some of the challenges in managing such relationships?

Dr. Atkins: One of the biggest things we’ve done is establishing partnerships with quite a few international universities. We have a partnership with Cambridge. We have a partnership with the India Institute of Technology.

Dr. Nat: IT

Dr Atkins: IT and we have a partnership with the Beijing University and each one of these universities have a specialty that we are virtually telling them you are now our research arm for that. We fail; we succeed based on how well you succeed and how well you fail. We give them a rolling multi-year, I won’t say contract, but a grant per say to do research along some guidance that we give but not necessarily direction. We give them guidance that we need light weight material. IT is really known for their materials technology and their materials focus and their innovation in new materials, especially their light weight materials and high temperature materials. So our engineers go over there, we do less of that research in the United States but we have liaison engineers that go back and forth and talk with the researchers. There we give them real problems, and we share with them what our real problem is. We bring their engineers into our facility were we can show them the problem and it becomes one of communications and managing communications and managing expectations at that point. It’s a relatively new focus and thrust within Boeing. It’s only about five years old, and the results have been all favorable. Our engineers have excepted it because they are beginning to see that there may be multiple ways to look at a problem and that having ideas from a different culture and a different society prompts them to think differently and likewise on the other side prompts them to think a little different about problems. It has been a really good relationship that we begin to start and I think it is only going to continue to grow. Airbus has one purpose in mind it’s primarily a production type company. They do a little research in order to develop elements that they need specifically for their commercial type airplanes, therefore, research and technology into things that might help a fighter airplane or might help a space launch vehicle or might help a helicopter, does not necessarily get done. They share within the European environment and amongst the countries there. They do something similar. I think we have a much more broad and diverse approach to the problem, to the innovation aspect of this. I think time will tell which one of these approaches is a little more efficient and which ones are paying off. Some of the challenges, the biggest challenges are communications, obviously is one. You have got separation by 8000 miles, you’ve got separations by 24 hour time zones, shifts and the power of the web is helping us minimize that, but there is still that issue and getting on site. You can’t have collaborative research without having people get together meet each other and talk to each other and so the travel associated with moving people back and forth. It’s a little bit of a challenge to optimize that, but it is establishing this really good working relationship and then offering conduit so that that can stay sustained at that point, so communication is probably our biggest challenge.