Cooper Standard Sharing the Spark with Chris Couch
About Christopher Couch
In 2021, Christopher Couch, President of Fluid Handling Systems and Chief Technology Officer at Cooper Standard, discussed the company’s innovation efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. He stated that “innovation is alive and well at Cooper Standard today despite the challenges of managing through a global pandemic” and that the company’s “commitment to innovation has never wavered.” Couch announced the launch of an initiative called CS Open Innovation, which he described as a way to “connect with innovators from a diverse range of startups, universities, and suppliers.” He noted that the initiative offers “pilot funding through technical services” and that in the first half of 2020, the company had “engaged with more than 14 startups and non-traditional suppliers to help accelerate innovation to market.” Couch also spoke about the company’s approach to managing research and development investments. He explained that Cooper Standard has “innovation pipelines and processes and stage gate processes” to “quickly narrow down where we're going to allocate our precious R&D dollars.” He added that the company aims to “think like a startup” by making “the minimal investment to sort of answer the next most important question and either wind up killing things quickly or taking them to fruition.”