In an era where agility, customer-centricity, and AI-readiness are redefining the role of the CIO, Bayer is executing one of the most ambitious enterprise transformations in the corporate world. Known as Dynamic Shared Ownership, the initiative isn’t just a tech modernization—it’s a reimagining of how a global life sciences giant thinks, works, and leads.
At the recent Software Excellence Network summit, Dr. Bernd Lohmann, transformation lead at Bayer, unveiled how this new operating model is helping the company dismantle bureaucracy, empower local ownership, and accelerate innovation across R&D, IT, production, and commercial units—at global scale.
Bayer employs over 90,000 people across pharmaceuticals, crop science, and consumer health. Like many large multinationals, the company struggled with the typical symptoms of legacy organizational design:
What began as an IT initiative quickly revealed itself to be a broader organizational and cultural challenge.
At the core of Dynamic Shared Ownership is a radical principle: push 95% of all decisions to the teams doing the work. No more steerco approvals. No more deferring to middle managers. Instead, small, autonomous squads are formed around customer outcomes and empowered to deliver end-to-end.
“People used to work for their bosses. Now, they work for the mission: Health for all, Hunger for none,” Dr. Lohmann explained.
Managers don’t approve work—they coach. Teams aren’t functional units—they’re cross-functional squads responsible for both delivery and decision-making. Everyone operates on equal footing, with fluid access to resources and clear accountability for value creation.
The model is executed through 90-day outcome cycles. Each squad defines what it will deliver in the next quarter, executes with sprints (often weekly), and then retrospects, adjusts, and re-plans.
This shift away from static annual planning toward rolling agility has had far-reaching effects:
This transformation is particularly visible in Bayer’s IT landscape. Lohmann shared two compelling case studies from Crop Science:
A once-siloed, multi-partner, ticket-heavy legacy system is now maintained by a dedicated product squad. It includes a product owner, developers, data scientists, and IT architects—all in one team with full-stack responsibility.
“They own the application, the data pipelines, and the infrastructure. No more handoffs. No more delays.”
Built within Bayer’s SAP environment, a legacy portal for seed orders is now undergoing weekly iterative development by a unified team of business and IT experts. The result? A projected 90% reduction in development costs, faster delivery, and better alignment with customer needs.
CIOs are no strangers to the productization of IT. But Bayer takes it a step further by aligning even infrastructure and data operations to product teams—as long as the product is in active evolution.
Once software products reach a stable state, they are transitioned to shared service maintenance—a blended model of internal employees and offshore partners. This helps ensure long-term sustainability without sacrificing agility or efficiency.
Perhaps the most overlooked challenge of decentralization is data fragmentation. Lohmann acknowledged that silos are still a reality—even under the new model. But Bayer is investing heavily in data asset management and shared semantics to reduce overlap and ensure interoperability across divisions.
“Patient data, for example, used to be split between research and commercial. Now, we’re building unified data assets that support both.”
This investment is not just about analytics—it's about preparing for the AI-native enterprise, where consistent, well-governed data flows are essential for enabling machine learning, generative AI, and digital twin technologies.
What does all this mean for CIOs?
Bayer's Dynamic Shared Ownership model is a glimpse into the post-digital enterprise: agile, federated, purpose-driven, and AI-ready. It's not without resistance or risk, but the early results—reduced headcount without productivity loss, faster cycles, higher engagement—are promising.
When CIOs ask how to attract talent, empower teams, and compete in an AI-driven market, Lohmann offers a simple answer: start with purpose.
Whether you're engineering seeds, fighting cancer, or writing code—Health for all, Hunger for none isn’t just a slogan. It’s an operating system.
“Just imagine if every team in your company knew how their work connected to the mission. That’s how transformation becomes real.”
Note: While I've tried to represent Dr. Bernd Lohmann's presentation to the best of my ability, I still strongly recommend watching his masterclass to understand the full context of his views. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to me.