As part of Ciba’s Innovation Initiative, a new series of innovation facilities was created. This was done to strengthen and expand Ciba’s existing core competencies and its process development skills as well as to develop new technology platforms for the future. The creation of these centers of excellence brought like-minded researchers together under one roof, allowing for the cross-pollination of ideas.

Four new types of facilities have been created:

• Research Centers
  These Centers have the mandate to strengthen and expand Ciba's six core competencies, focusing on research for new products and technologies thereby opening new opportunities with existing and new customers.
  
  
• Application Centers
  These Centers have the mandate to maintain and to expand application expertise and depth within a given industry. They focus on developing new applications for existing and new products.
  
  
• Emerging Competency Centers
  These Centers have the mandate to identify and cultivate the right technologies to sustain Ciba’s future development.
  
  
• Process Innovation & Development Centers
  These Centers have the mandate to secure short and long term cost competitiveness of core products or product families through aggressive and continuous process innovation and improvements. They are also in charge of supporting new product development and of driving radical new process innovation. In addition, they manage the global new product launch platform and small scale production unit.
  
  
• Regional Technical Centers
  These Centers are Ciba’s prime technical interface to customers. They solve customer problems with existing products or product combinations.

		In 2008, Ciba consolidated its innovation expertise into a smaller constellation of “centers of excellence” that grouped the company’s expertise and innovation assets together. These centers are supported by satellite facilities where a critical mass of distinct skill sets is located.
		Switzerland is part of the historic center of the chemical industry and the city of Basel remains at the heart of innovation at Ciba. A number of important innovation centers are based in the Basel region. The U.S. remains an important source for innovation, with a substantial number of start-up firms and a significant percentage of the global venturing activity occurring there. In addition, Ciba has continued to strengthen its presence in Asia over the last few years with the opening of a lab in Shanghai in 2005 and a refurbished Indian laboratory in Chandivali in 2007.
		Three sites provide Ciba’s primary innovation focus, each working with multiple competencies: Basel Region (including Basel and Schweizerhalle, Switzerland, and Grenzach, Germany), Tarrytown (U.S.) and Amagasaki (Japan).

Ciba's site innovation footprint