-: I'm Martin Reeves,
Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute,
and author of "The Imagination Machine."
Welcome to "Leaders on Imagination."
Today we're delighted to be joined by Aloke Lohia,
who is the founder and CEO of Indorama.
It was founded as a specialty chemical company in 1990
and is now the world's largest producer of PET,
a leader in tire cords, the fibers that go into tires
and also a major player in specialty fibers,
for applications like airbags and hygiene products.
So welcome Aloke.
-: Thank you, Martin,
a pleasure to be here.
-: So we're talking about imagination, Aloke,
what is imagination to you in business?
-: Martin, business is all about imagination,
and when I started my career, I got a few tips.
Basically, my father told me, "Look,
you are in a business where margins are expected
to contract, not expand and costs are going to go up,
there's going to be inflation.
So how are you going to deal with those two things?
It's going to be our imagination
and that will be a success."
So it's been something from day one.
-: Is imagination particularly important today, Aloke?
-: You know, if you look at any statistics,
the top 20 companies, the top 50 companies
over the last 20 years, 50 years,
they don't exist anymore,
at least not in that relative space anymore.
And therefore, if it wasn't imagination,
we couldn't really think of what will be
in the next 30 years, which is so important.
-: Now, CEOs of large companies,
especially in established companies,
tell me that it's pretty hard for large companies
to reimagine their businesses.
Why is it hard?
-: Because you just get into your comfort zone,
especially if you are a successful company.
When you're successful,
that's when you have to reinvent yourself,
that's when you have to say that, "What brought us here,
will it get us there?"
And that is where we spend a lot of time,
I spend personally a lot of time thinking about that.
So it is a fact of life.
You have to keep reinventing.
-: So indeed, Indorama,
your company has reinvented itself several times
as a PET company, as a specialty chemical company,
as a specialty fibers company.
So how do you keep imagination alive at Indorama?
-: Martin, for any success, for any business,
what you're trying to do is create value,
and you know, you start with shareholder value
and then it evolves into stakeholder value.
And today ESG is a big part of all of that.
For IVL, the company I operate,
basically we started from a commodity business
and then as we grew, I wanted to add the HVA,
the specialty platform, for a couple of reasons.
I just didn't want to do a commodity.
I didn't want to do it in one country.
I wanted to de-risk my portfolio.
That's why we went global.
We lucked out, I had a very strong, capable team with me
who helped me manage the business
and therefore, little by little, country by country,
we added the fiber portfolio that you mentioned
that was our HVA portfolio.
And we continued to do the same.
Basically, we are the largest in PET.
PET is a great plastic, is recyclable,
we can do mechanical recycling already very well,
we are looking at chemical recycling,
but the biggest challenge now for the next 30 years
is on climate change,
how do we get to zero carbon?
-: And what are some of the management techniques you use
to make sure that your managers are not just executing,
but they're actually imagining five and ten years ahead?
What are some of the techniques you use?
-: Well, you know, you have to keep evolving yourself,
but you can only evolve as much.
What we have done, what I've done
is that I have great people,
so what I've done is I've asked my greatest of people
who have run the business for the last 10 years,
15 years, to own the business.
So I called them the operating management.
Then I've built a new capability of leaders
who are helping me with making the company future-proof,
you can call it.
Basically by investing in a global system, a global ERP,
standardizing a few things that can be standardized.
I don't want to take over the entrepreneurship
from the operating leaders,
but I do want them to take benefit and leverage on the tools
as a company, as we grow,
we do need some systems and standards.
So I'm deploying those, plus I'm getting new leaders
from across the world, from the best tests.
And this team of six people, we work on our strategy,
we are working on the next five years.
"Where are we going in the next 10 years?"
Those sort of things.
-: Now obviously, vision without execution
is not very helpful and execution without vision
is not very helpful, and they're very different things.
How do you make sure that your management team
is thinking about both of those things,
maintaining that tension?
-: As you said, everything is a balance.
As I think of our portfolio and I think of our stakeholders,
basically I know that we have a large business,
we make 15 million tons of this or that,
and we are in 34 countries,
we grow at double digits every year,
so all of this takes agility.
So on one side, the operating team,
they are doing a fantastic job on that.
For my top leadership of our six,
what we call the IMC, Indorama Management Council,
we pay maybe a third of our time on operations
to help our teams,
but then another third on HR matters
because the company and my leadership team
is as old as me.
So over the next five, ten years,
we will have to ensure that there is the next set of leaders
and they will be coming with this mindset in any case.
We just have to ensure that we get the right leaders
in place.
-: Well, thank you so much Aloke, for sharing your thoughts
on business imagination with us today.
For more information on imagination in business,
please visit The Imagination Machine website
displayed on the slide.