The Age of Innovation

He spent the pandemic years with his family in a house near the forest, where his child got to see hens, pick blackberries and cherries, even visit a cattle farm. “But Luxembourg isn't for everyone,” says Cristian-Ioan Paun, who from the tiny European state leads the digital strategy of the giant DuPont.

He is something of a Leonardo da Vinci for the corporation, founded more than two centuries ago and responsible over time for inventing polymers such as neoprene, Teflon, Lycra and nylon. As Global Digital Strategist and Chief Digital Officer, he creates new digital business models, partnerships and ecosystems that turn a traditional business into a kind of “Tesla” of its sector.

“We had complex solutions that filter or desalinate water, but they weren't intelligent. Imagine 6,000 filters and not knowing when one breaks, or which, so you stop the whole plant. We equipped our systems with sensors, built a cloud application and created AI algorithms to reduce the water and chemicals used, helping our customers become more sustainable and cut carbon emissions,” he says, illustrating the use of IoT and AI in a traditional sector, one of the strongest lines of the chemical giant, DuPont Water.

“When I took this role, the division president asked what our digital strategy would be, and how I'd answer: build, buy or partner? I said he probably wouldn't like my answer: we'd do all three. That's what we do: some applications in-house, some with partners, some bought and configured to our needs.” He admits it was hard to attract software talent, because DuPont wasn't known for a digital appetite like the Silicon Valley brands. “But I spoke about the impact DuPont would have on the water industry, bringing such technologies to market for the first time.” Throughout his career, the biggest challenges came from people management, not technology.

“Leading operations globally is hard; there are perceptions and biases. You have to aim higher and not give up. We Romanians are no less capable than anyone, and we have a greater desire to succeed.”

A career built step by step

The first decade of the millennium found him in Romania, in banking, which he left months before the 2008 crisis. He moved into FMCG at the brewer InBev, where at just over 25 he was IT director for Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine. After InBev's Central and Eastern European operations were acquired in 2009 by the fund CVC Partners and renamed StarBev, he stayed on, deeply involved in integrations, automations and optimisations of IT operations globally, both under the Luxembourg-based fund and after the 2012 sale to Canada's Molson Coors.

In 2015, newly married, he took a role outside Romania. “When the CEE operations were sold I was supposed to move to Russia or Ukraine, but I didn't want to, so I chose Amsterdam,” says the man who became global IT leader for Jacobs Douwe Egberts, the company born of the merger of Douwe Egberts and Mondelez's coffee division. “After a heavily regulated field like banking and a very open one like beer, I stepped into coffee, leading the integration of a smaller company's IT with a giant's. As an Eastern European I had to assert myself among many Western Europeans. The hardest thing, again, was change management.”

Meanwhile, Blackstone had bought a Luxembourg-based company, and his versatile profile, transformations, integrations, business-line separations, matched the American group's philosophy. “From 2017 I joined first as IT director; then, with my passion for business transformation and design, I created and led a business-transformation team of not only IT but business people. I digitalised processes, introduced new technologies, RPA and AI, and built an online onboarding platform. It was the first time I truly stepped out of IT, reporting directly to the board.”

Then DuPont came calling. After Dow and DuPont merged into DowDuPont, later split into Corteva, Dow Inc. and DuPont. “DuPont wanted a much larger digital footprint across EMEA. I spent about nine months in negotiations, and because this industry is full of opportunity, even more than banking, I made the move. It's conservative, with a 200-year history and products that almost sell themselves. But I had a leader who understood the opportunity and believed, with me, in the value we could bring through advanced technology.”

Today he leads digitalisation for DuPont's water-filtration and desalination division, and advises the European Union and Luxembourg's industrial federation on IoT, AI and cybersecurity. And he hasn't forgotten Romania: “I try to give back some of the help I received. I've given conferences for free, including a business-transformation framework. But the country needs a forward-thinking attitude.”