How McLaren F1 Tech Is Supercharging the World's Industries - Wired

One morning in March 2012, GlaxoSmithKline engineer Shaun Glover visited the McLaren Technology Group headquarters in Woking, Surrey. A year earlier, McLaren’s CEO and founder Ron Dennis and Andrew Witty, the CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, had signed a partnership deal. “Some of us connected the dots about how a Formula 1 team would be able to help us. Of course, others questioned what a Formula 1 team could ever know about making toothpaste. That day, Glover and his team met Geoff McGrath of McLaren Applied Technologies, a company set up in 2004 by Dennis to apply Formula 1’s high-performance culture and working methods to businesses such as GlaxoSmithKline. McLaren’s headquarters is the 57,000-square-meter Foster + Partners-designed McLaren Technology Centre, which embodies the ethos of one of the oldest and most successful teams in the history of Formula 1 racing. The building is connected to the nearby production center, where McLaren Automotive makes its luxury sports cars. To introduce his guests to McLaren’s high-performance culture, McGrath played them TV footage from the 2008 Monaco Grand Prix. Source: www.wired.com