Building a billion-dollar business requires the right people and the right plan.
Don Dumoulin, senior vice president of Roche Diagnostics in Indianapolis, said he would give students a plan to help reach that billion-dollar status today at 3 p.m. in Whittinger Business Building Room 144. [Updated: Room 144 is the correct room for the event.]
"I think one of the things I'm going to talk about is the path to growth for a brand," he said. "Start by making sure you are in a good category [in the market] and have the technology. Then take that technology and build a product that consumers really want to use and is differentiated in the market."
One of the important aspects in a successful business is having people with diverse skills and expertise, he said.
He will tell how Roche Investing took the desire of people with diabetes to check glucose levels at home, and developed a technology to meet that need, he said.
"[The technology] was revolutionary," he said. "It has changed people's lives over the past 20 years and their ability to cope with diabetes on a day-to-day basis."
Accu-Check, the glucose monitoring technology, was developed in the early 1980s and let people to check glucose levels at home and treat their diabetes more easily, he said. Filling this need allowed Roche Industries to become a world-wide leader in its industry, he said.
Previously, people had to go to the doctor to know what was going on, Dumoulin said. There are about 20.8 million people in the U.S. with diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association. World-wide, there are about 195 million people with diabetes, according to the International Diabetes Federation.
Dumoulin is a distinguished alumnus of the business college and a member of its executory advisory board, Tammy Estep, director of external relations for the Miller College of Business, said. Dumoulin graduated from Ball State University in 1982.
Lynne Richardson, dean of the Miller College of Business, asked Dumoulin to come speak at Ball State and visit individual classes, Estep said.
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