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| Introduction W.L. Gore & Associates is probably best known in Europe for its Gore-Tex ® product (that piece of material in your coat that keeps you dry yet allows your body to breathe, yet few people know very much about this privately owned and relatively secret company. Fewer still realise the very innovative and contemporary way the organisation is run – it seeks to have an ‘unmanagement style. Annual revenues top $3 billion. W.L. Gore is a privately held company ranking in the top 150 of the Forbes top 500 privately held companies for 2016. Indeed, W.L. Gore would rank in the Fortune 500 companies in terms of profits, market value and equity value. Given that the firm is a privately held corporation, many details of the company s operations and strategies are not widely known. Unlike publicly listed firms, it does not need to share information on such topics as marketing strategies, manufacturing processes or technology development. The company is owned primarily by its employees known as associates) and the Gore family. W.L. Gore enterprises has more than 7,000 associates at over 45 locations around the world. W.L. Gore & Associates was founded in 1958 in Newark, Delaware, when Bill and Vieve Gore set out to explore market opportunities for fluorocarbon polymers, especially polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). First developed by Bill Gore when he worked as a scientist for the Dupont Corporation. Gore could not get anyone at Dupont to invest in his new idea, so he bought the patent and went into business on his own. Within the first decade alone, W.L. Gore wire and cables landed on the moon (the firm supplied cables for the 1969 lunar missions the company opened divisions in Scotland and Germany and a venture partnership took root in Japan. W.L. Gore has introduced its unique technical capabilities into hundreds of diverse products. It has defined new standards for comfort and protection for workwear and activewear (Gore-Tex ® ); advanced the science of regenerating tissues destroyed by disease or traumatic injuries developed next-generation materials for printed circuit boards and fibre optics and pioneered new methods to detect and control environmental pollution. Download 0.52 Mb. Share with your friends:
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