A 354-year-old agent of change

Tom Kinisky, senior vice president & chief innovation officer, Saint-Gobain Group, Paris, France

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Tom Kinisky, senior vice president & chief innovation officer, Saint-Gobain Group, Paris, France

Company founded: 1665
Kinisky's base of operations: Malvern, Pa.
Residence: Newtown Square, Pa.
Born: Saratoga, N.Y.
Age: 63
Colleges: New York Univeristy; Pace University in New York

Tom Kinisky spent 12 years working in Worcester for Saint-Gobain Abrasives, watching the community and the region’s manufacturing industry begin its transformation into what it is today. Now, he has risen to chief innovation officer at the $48-billion French multinational corporation. He came back to Massachusetts in June to announce a new partnership with Greentown Labs in Somerville, where the company’s 2,000 Central Mass. employees already help startups craft solutions for climate change and other environmental problems.

What is your latest innovation push?

We are going to be 354 years old this year, and innovation has always been at the heart of what we’ve done. But, in the last 15 years, we’ve recognized the need to be more open, so we wanted to engage with more startup companies.

We started an organization called NOVA inside of Saint-Gobain, where we might do agreements or partnerships with young companies we believe are working on products or missions important to Saint-Gobain.

As part of this, we realized we needed to go deeper, so we started developing relationships with incubators, and particularly with Greentown Labs in Somerville, which started about five years ago. The startups there are working issues important to Saint-Gobain like climate change, environmental solutions and clean technologies.

How do you work with Greentown?

Between Worcester and our Northborough R&D facility, we have 2,000 employees in the area, and we have embedded people into Greentown Labs to help various startups bring their projects to fruition.

Earlier this month, we announced we are extending our partnership with Greentown Labs, becoming the named sponsor of its Town Green program, which is a gathering space for people to come together and bounce ideas off each other to address the issue of climate change. We eventually will have a speaker series as part of the Town Green.

How big is your Northborough R&D?

Saint-Gobain engages in innovation all over the world. We have eight R&D centers globally, and the second largest is in Northborough, which is our only one in North America. We have about 400 people there, and they focus on issues like life sciences, building products and abrasives.

What other innovations are there?

Innovation is not limited to just R&D, even in your own facility. You have companies like Uber and Lyft have transformed industries by innovating business model changes.

We are pushing out more internal venturing throughout all employee levels, trying to create an energy and passion around new ideas inside the company, like a real startup. We have provided seed financing to employees to take their ideas and make them grow.

How did you like working in Worcester?

I really enjoyed my time in Worcester. I was chairman of a United Way of Central Massachusetts fundraising campaign and worked closely with the folks over at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, with all the exciting research they have going on over there.

I joined the company when it was Norton Co. and was there for about a year before the hostile takeover attempt by BTR of Great Britain, where Saint-Gobain came in as the white knight and saved the company from the takeover.

That facility has a long history.

In Worcester, Saint-Gobain has this place called Norton Hall. Next to all the pictures of the Norton founders, they put up the names of everyone who has worked for the company for 25 years. After all this time, there are a lot of names up there, to where they now have books in the lobby, where people get their name after they work there for 25 years. It is really interesting, where you can see all the generations of families who have worked at the company. One time, we had a CFO who retired in the same room as his grandfather.

You can also see all the waves of immigrants who came into Worcester and ended up working at Saint-Gobain. There’s all the different parts of the world where these waves happened at different times.

That place sort of shows the manufacturing history of New England.

Manufacturing in Worcester is going through a lot of changes now, moving toward biotechnology and life sciences. I love that Worcester is transforming in this way.

This interview was conducted and edited for length and clarity by WBJ Editor Brad Kane.