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August 06, 2020 08:30 AM

Kickstart: A focus on innovation

Rhoda Miel
Managing Editor
Plastics News Staff
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    A focus on innovation

    Everyone wants to think of themselves as an innovator. Consider the number of companies you've run across who proclaim themselves an "innovative provider of" a specific product on their websites.

    But being innovative isn't as easy as adding some branding language to your corporate plan. So let's hear it for Nottingham Spirk, a Cleveland design consulting group that was named one of the 100 best places for innovators by Fast Company magazine.

    What's Nottingham Spirk? It's the company behind the development of some big plastic consumer products such as the Arm & Hammer Spinbrush, the Swiffer Sweep + Vac and the Sherwin-Williams Twist-n-Pour paint container. And a little item you may have tried to buy recently, Purell. Nottingham Spirk worked with Purell owner Gojo to develop packaging for the hand sanitizer.

    "The consultancy approaches every assignment with vertical integration, ensuring companywide collaboration," Fast Company said as it ranked the company at No. 87 on its list.

    As Scott Suttell from Crain's Cleveland Business notes, the magazine says the list "identifies which companies are encouraging bold experimentation, not just from the C-suite or engineering groups but from every level of the organization."

    There were nearly 900 applicants and an eight-judge panel to pick the top 100.

    Other companies with plastics connections in the list (as big customers or producers) included medical products company Abbott, Nestle, Stanley Black & Decker and Deere & Co.

     

    An in-person event to talk post-pandemic needs

    Remember attending actual conferences? Not just digital ones?

    Wondering what it will look like when you finally get to attend one again?

    The Summer of Purpose took place in late June in Munich as a kind of a hybrid, with some speakers and attendees there in person, and others beamed in digitally. The event, created by Grameen Creative Lab and the Yunus Centre, expanded its sustainability focus to look at what needed to be done to battle the coronavirus pandemic and also at what innovations are needed to recover from both the physical and economic impacts of COVID-19.

    Organizers included Christina Jaeger, director of the Grameen Creative Lab's Yunus Environment Hub and one of the 2020 Women Breaking the Mold.

    Click through to see a video of highlights from the event. I'm not going to lie, seeing people at an actual conference — even as they sat in chairs placed for social distancing, wore masks and greeted one another with elbow bumps — actually made me nostalgic for in-person events.

     

    NASA/JPL Caltech

    Carbon fiber blades for a helicopter headed to Mars.

    Plastics in space

    Plastics are headed back to Mars, with composites making up key parts of the Mars Perseverance Rotor, which launched July 30 and is expected to land on Mars in February 2021.

    Toray Advanced Composites provided materials used for the structural support for the Mars entry heat shield, the landing deck of the Mars Perseverance Rover, and the rotor blades and chassis structure of the first-ever Mars Ingenuity Helicopter.

    And if making the blades on the first helicopter on Mars isn't innovative, then I don't know what is.

     

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