Intrinsically Bernward Garthoff dislikes buzzwords. But he knows how useful they can be, particularly when it comes to facing the challenges of change. After all, he has a long and successful management career at Bayer, retiring from the Board of BayerCrop Science in November last year. For the last three years, he also served as chairman of the German Biotech Association, DIB, and has been a board member of EuropaBio. Rather than putting his feet up, Garthoff took office as the first biotechnology cluster manager of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) in January 2009.
"Your nomination is a further important step on North Rhine-Westphalia's way to becoming Germany's number one innovation state", State's Minister of Innovation Andreas Pinkwart said of Garthoff when introducing him for the management post. Jokingly describing himself as a "hyphen child" of a Colognian mother and a Westphalian father Garthoff says, "It's really in my ...
