It is amazing how delicate the innovative impulse is. Like most brain related activities, innovation is a use-it-or-lose-it kind of affair. Innovative folk can be inspired by management to go forth and devise products that will keep the company afloat 5 years from now. They can also be contradicted or neglected by management and as a result the innovative flame can extinguish.
It is not unusual for organizations to go to the considerable expense of hiring research chemists yet not let them do what, ostensibly, they are best at- developing new art. New art can lead to new goods and services, or it can lead to more cost efficient approaches to existing product. Research chemists can also capture the nuance of a given process, leading to a better understanding of quirks and diagnostic signals.
Or not.
It is quite possible for a company to be run by people who have no interest or ability to use a research chemist in a broadly productive way. In my experience, it is not uncommon for chemists to be hired on to perform a very narrow range of activities. A wise chemist in the job market should be alert to the possibility that their creativity will not actually be sought by the employer. Rather, the chemist might become just a mechanical arm for some character whose ambitions may not include you.
Research is very expensive and the wary R&D chemist should always have an ear to the ground to listen for the galloping horse of the axeman. Some organizations have a policy of spending a certain fraction of the proceeds on R&D every year. Others are more project or product line oriented and staff-up or staff-down as the circumstance requires. R&D resources may get re-jiggered when a project changes. It is always best to be on a winning project that management is enthusiastic about. Dark horse projects are prone to being jettisoned at the first sign of trouble.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
All discovery is insubordination!
Management is about loyalty, local stasis, and ostentatiously fraternizing with the proper Korporate Kulture class.
“8^>)
R & D is a continuum, but without agreeded upon definitions for the endpoints, midpoints or anywhere else. One person’s R is another person’s D. It’s not just a matter of semantics either, it can form an ugly reality. I was let go by a company that thought my efforts were way to much on the R end of the scale, even though I was privately insulted by how much I thought my efforts were on the D end and could have been done by a technician.
The R&D world can be pretty ugly sometimes. I’ve been in shouting matches in the lab with some pretty savage characters. Real mongolian horsemen who moved into R&D management.
You’re right about setting goals. But it seems like your former management may have had trouble with communication.
” Rather, the chemist might become just a mechanical arm for some character whose ambitions may not include you.”
Prophetic! And as a matter of fact chemists ARE considered just mechanical arms by management. But why do chemists allow themselves to be treated thus? Chemists are treated like crap because the business model selects (and thus enriches) a particular kind of personality. Such individual’s suckle joy from the hellish sado-masochim inherent in toxic plumes and spinning stir bars. Throw in a dash of low self esteem or exploiter want to-be fervor and you have the standard industrial chemist. Yes the chemical jungle has made this its ideal herbivore, watched over by the noble lion business type who kills the strong and leaves only the servile sycophants who grovel in ecstasy at the mere thought of praise from the MBA uberlord. And of course chemists can be recruited globally, which ensures the servile blood line stays pure.
Innovation stems from the unconventional. Those who can think in new way often don’t make the best employees in the above model. It seems google has some unconventional approaches to fostering creativity, but on the whole is seems the stogy Chem industry will continue on its boring way. The system created above does work, but just not as well as it could.
Wow! You’re on a roll! Well put. If chemistry curriculum included more economics emphasis- like chemical engineering does- I think chemists would fare somewhat better overall. Chemists are ill served by academic advisors early in their coursework. Academia is best suited to produce more academics.
You’re last statement is unfortunately too true. It’s the rare academic professor who can realize that people actually want to buy chemicals besides drugs. In my experience, chemical engineering professors seem to realize that there are industrial applications and that people should learn the sociology of industrial life. I don’t know about others, but it seemed to me that only knowledge of industry that many academic have is solely related to the drug industry. It seems like a number of other interesting industries and job functions fall by the wayside.
I have to agree with the point about the medicinal chemistry focus. When I was a grad student in a synthesis group our view of the job universe was limited to pharma. Everything else was less than choice. But that was because I had no exposure to polymers, catalysts, inorganic synthesis, or importantly, scale-up.
I think that you have to be ready to give the suits the finger if you want to be a good research chemist in industry, and really invent new things. Depending on the environment, you may have to mumble about what you are doing every once in a while.
I’m a chemist for industry to support my science habit. I want to make money for my evil overlords because they have deigned to share a little of the profit with me, and because it is a convenient way for me to keep score. But I cannot become what I am not and be what I am, so my values only sorta line up with the corporate machine.
I suspect that a lot of industrial scientists have to support the science habit this way. Good point. I’m in the same boat. I’m starting to get the sense that there is widespread distrust of the business tribe out there by the chemist tribe.