I had a discussion with some professor friends recently about the subject of entrepreneurialism among chemists. I made my usual points about how people become captains of industry. Be more like an engineer. Preferably one with an MBA. Naturally, my professorly friends were unmoved. Having spent their entire careers in academia, they just didn’t know about this. I didn’t expect them to.
After I made a gross generalization about the lack of entrepreneurialism among chemists, one prof pointed out that in her field of research, there were indeed people who were starting ventures. I do not doubt this. But it made me think. People, perhaps especially those in higher education or just advanced technology, naturally conclude that an entrepreneurial venture has to be based on new technology. Yes, we need people to start businesses in nanotechnology or what ever you call the latest iteration of biochemistry. We need to have a constant churn of people trying to put new products and capabilities on the table.
But we also need businesses who are able to make polysubstituted phenols, anilines, pyridines, alcohols, ketones, aldehydes, halides, and all of the other “ordinary” raw materials and intermediates that are now largely made in Asia. We need companies who will make 100 kg or 1 MT of some obscure organic material. Entrepreneurialism isn’t just about the bleeding edge. It is about having a dream and seizing opportunity. It can be cookies or chemicals.
For the most part, intermediates have moved to Asia because of the economics of batch processing fine chemicals. And a moribund approach to chemical manufacturing in the USA. Chemical manufacturing in the USA is complicated. There are environmental permits, TSCA, high waste disposal costs, high labor costs, expensive processing equipment, and layers of business structure to manufacture safely and with high quality. A chemist faced with navigating the maze of regulations, engineering details, and business operations is a busy person indeed. Few people can do all of it alone.
There are two fundamental approaches to starting a technology company- Market pull and technology push. Market pull is an activity where one builds manufacturing capacity with the intent of filling it by making exsting items of commerce. Technology push is where one intends to construct a new kind of technology in the form of a service or widget. Market pull is an approach wherein customers buy known technology. Technology push is the activity where the customer is asked to buy into a new product or service. In this case, you’re necessarily asking customers to be first adopters or to find new forms of value.
I’ve seen startups fail because their one-act pony didn’t work. Instead of trying to make a go of it with a one-act pony, a whole circus of acts should be going at once. A batch reactor is capable of making many things. A plant built around one product is entirely dependent on that one product. Batch reactors occupied with products from many market segments are batch reactors that will remain busy over a variety of market conditions.
Pharmaceutical intermediate manufacturing is a business weighed down with substantial overhead and structural immobility. It is not automatically a great place to start. The GMP world is very complex and peppered with many operational land mines. Many early intermediates are not covered under GMP. That is a good place to start.
ISO certification is another area where I take issue. While ISO certification brings good business practices, it also brings layers of administrative structure. It is possible to mimic this structure without formally adopting it. The ISO label on you advertising will impress some buyers, but a surprising niumber will be indifferent. If you want to be in pharma intermediates, this will be necessary. What an ISO certification says is that you will do what you say you are going to do. That is a good idea regardless.
What has to change is the economics of manufacturing in the USA. One way to do this is automated synthesis. A good example of a problem: How would one automate the synthesis of an OLED chemical like 1 MT of 8-hydroxyquinoline? This is an existing item of commerce, so entry into the market means taking share from someone else. You’ll probably have to best the market price by 10 % at minimum to induce someone to switch vendors.
The chemistry isn’t cutting edge, but the processing economics may be. This is an example of how entrepreneurialism can and should tackle manufacturing problems and gain a competitive edge. Since labor cost is a huge driver, find a way to shave off labor. An entrepreneur’s competitive edge may be process cost savings alone. You don’t have to wait for a scientific paradigm shift.
Part of success is just showing up. Just having capacity and a knack for a particular transformation can attract buyers. If you are handy with borylation and are flexible, somebody will call and want a quote. And maybe a sample. Pretty soon you have a PO and a deadline.
It is good to consider that an advance may be in the form of processing economics, not just the science.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
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July 11, 2011 at 5:19 am
Old Chem Prof
Those of us who have been on both sides of the academic/industrial interface know how true your post is.
How do we get the graduate schools to include more material of genuine use to the graduates who go on to industrial careers? Quantum mechanical Hamiltonians are not what they need to make chemical manufacturing processes more efficient.
July 11, 2011 at 9:31 am
gaussling
Thanks for the comment. I would offer that we need to recognize that applied science is a field worthy of a place on a university faculty in general. The geologists have done this long ago with the reconition that economic geology is a discrete discilpline. This field encompases the domain of ore geology, economics, and related engineering.
Chemistry has surely risen to this level of maturity as a discipline and, given the massive contribution of the chemical sciences to the overall economy, the stewards of chemistry- chemistry faculty and respective deans- are in a position to innovate.
The problem is that chemistry’s college of cardinals probably won’t do this. After generations of scholar production, there is neither precendent nor the focus since funding does not drive applied or economic chemistry in academia. Chemists are problem solvers first and foremost. In academe they solve problems and out in the world they solve problems. We should recognize that our graduates will be faced with all manner of problems to solve and that they may not be in the tidy domains p-chem, analytical, inorganic, and organic chemistry.
If you look at the Vitas of current chemistry faculty, you’ll find a large number of graduates of the top tier of schools- Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, etc. Perhaps if those schools were to implement an applied science program or establish the field of economic chemistry, then there would eventually be a transplantation of such disciplines to the rest of the country.
But, we can’t all be from this illustrious group of schools. And we’re not obligated to wait for this group to come to any particular realization about anything. They’ll continue to follow the funding like everyone else. That’s how you get tenure in these places.
Chemistry could use a facility modeled on the Media Lab at MIT. This is a shining example of applied science.
I would define economic chemistry as the study of the economics of the production of finished material goods via chemical manufacture. It would encompass the economics of chemical processing and connect to the transportation of materials, reaction engineering, the pragmatics of packaging and distribution, and marketing. Many chemcals are economic indicators and as such, provide entry onto the macroeconomics of chemical manufacture worldwide. A program would offer a BS, MS, & PhD in Applied Chemical Science.
July 11, 2011 at 3:19 pm
gale
Remember those two recent Ph.D. chemists who bought me lunch? They were wondering where all the jobs for Ph.D. chemists are, aside from university research. I had to smile. They said, “You don’t have your Ph.D., do you?”
We created this problem with manufacturing of all kinds when we decided that we wanted extensive environmental and safety controls here, but that it was perfectly acceptable to import products from other countries that don’t. Gee, dontcha love a competative edge?
July 11, 2011 at 7:54 pm
gaussling
There is a bit of a discontinuity there. But things are changing in Asia, China in particular.
http://www.zcommunications.org/second-thoughts-on-the-chinese-model-by-walden-bello
The Chinese model isn’t as rock solid as you might suppose. Chinese leaders are trying to stay ahead of their own population growth and the instability that comes from unemployment. I spoke to a manufacturer in China recently who described having to move their plant because of an explosion and fire. The civic leaders would not allow them to rebuild on their site. There is a greater accountability on manufacturers that in the past and the trend can only increase. Wages are increasing as are expectations. Chinese leaders may not be able to hold out on rising expactations.
July 2, 2012 at 2:56 pm
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