The Value Proposition

3 Replies

One of the most deleterious influences on the creative person is the naysayer. A person possessed by the need to be creative must eventually choose his/her companions wisely.  Naysayers are not usually bad people. They most often have your best interests at heart. But the impulse to give conservative counsel is irresistable by many well meaning folk.

For the creative person, the negative vibe is a type of noise that must be dealt with. In my own experience in business development, I have found that many people will choose risk avoidance as opposed to risk acceptance as the default condition. New ideas must be sold and every sale needs a value proposition.

Even sales people can participate in creative business.  Bringing in a new type of customer or entry to a new market segment can stimulate the creative juices at a company.  Business development people are by nature folk who are deeply tied into the technology capability at their company as well as the buzz in the market. Business development people often have two kids of sales activity- 1) sell the customer on capability, and 2) sell R&D and management on the new project with its long term possibilities. The customer may be the easiest sell of the two.

The customer must be able to take a value proposition back to management in order to make a reasoned buying decision. As a business development person, your job is to give an irresistable pitch to the prospective customer. Simultaneously, you have to pitch your own management as to the potential business the new project may bring.

It seems as though the impulse to say “No” when in doubt is hard wired into the brain. But it does serve a useful purpose by way of providing checks and balances to the decision to move forward.

Creative people are very interesting and very useful to have around. They can perform all sorts of technical services and can lead the charge to the next generation of products. But, they can lead the charge over a cliff as well. This is where skilled people management comes into play.  A good manager will ask for a value proposition for a new product, though it probably won’t be called that. They’ll ask for a business plan or a market survey or even an economic analysis. The idea is to put the onus of justification on the shoulders of those who propose to charge off into the battle.

The art of leading technical people is to herd them into the focal point of the value proposition. By combining a value-adding product to a pot of demand, you can produce a stream of profit.  Clever technical folk can invent new wonders all day every day. The trick is to lead them to do something that satisfies a current or a latent demand.

A good technology manager must manage the negative feedback, or naysayer input, that accompanies any group of people working on any project.  Most companies have talented but sour people who are good at finding fault or who practice negativism-by-wandering-around. Managers who can inspire loyalty to a project and to the company are called leaders. Sadly, in the real world, such people don’t always float to the top.  Often as not, project managers are ass-kickin’ SOB’s who made it to the top by merely surviving.

Winter Wonderland

2 Replies

Merry Christmas to all the good bloggenvolk out in the world! Thank you for the visits and the thoughtful comments- I appreciate all of them and do visit the linked sites.

As the sun sets in northern Colorado this Christmas eve, the back range of mountains are shrouded in the seasonal foehn wall of clouds with higher lenticular clouds scattered along the length of the Front Range. In some locations, stacks of lenticular clouds mark the spot where a standing wave of stratified zones of humid air mass is orographically lifted to form these curious formations. They resemble stacks of white flapjacks and can change their shape over a period of a few minutes.

On one memorable evening during cruise descent from altitude into Denver eastbound across the Rockies, we flew alongside a stack of salmon-orange hued lenticular clouds backlit from the setting sun. It was truly magical. Exiting the plane I mentioned this to the pilot and she nodded knowingly. At least a few of us were paying attention to the greatest show on earth.

In my mind’s eye, when I think of christmas the first image that appears is a field of Iowa cornstalks jutting out of drifted snow, ice crystals glinting from the surface crust in the low sun of winter. Indoors, my grandmother cooks lutefisk and scalloped potatoes while my grandfather taps out a polka on the piano. It is now a hundred years and a million miles distant. I miss those people.

Great Heaps of Crap

3 Replies

It seems that no matter where you go, where there is settlement- houses, businesses, etc.- there is “stuff”. By “stuff” I refer to manufactured goods. How much more stuff can we keep accumulating? How many more packages, widgets, gadgets, doo-dads, and bits & bobs can we continue to accumulate on the surface of our world? Lets dispense with the formalities and just call it what it is- crap.

Our factories are banging out container ships of crap as fast as they can manage.  Satellite repeaters overhead strain under the load of electronic transfer of funds across the world. The oceans are churned into a lather by container ships steaming across the ocean sea to deliver the containerized crap to anxious dock workers who off-load it as fast as possible. 

To see the extent of the madness, all you have to do is to browse in the Official Gazette of the patent office.  Clever citizens are inventing new kinds of crap to deal with the unexpected problems with the older crap. Our hardware stores are full of such inventions.

At home we tried to institute the Principle of Conservation of Crap wherein for every 100 lbs of crap we brought home, 100 lbs of crap had to go … elsewhere. It failed.  Johnnie on the Spot missed the bus.

Th’ Gaussling is lamenting the situation only because I am acutely afflicted with the accumulation of technical crap.  Decades of chemical journals, magazines, several metric tons of books, NMR spectra from grad school, and tons of files of photocopies representing whole forests felled for the satisfaction of my pathological need to accumulate information. The whole thing is twisted. Think of the forest creatures, man.

Yet, I can’t bring myself to pitch that folder of Grignard mechanism papers or back issues of J. Med. Chem.  Maybe there should be detox centers where information addicts can go to get their lives back. 

Fun at Chemical Trade Shows

2 Replies

One of the fun aspects of sales is doing booth duty at a trade show.  It is an opportunity to meet and greet lots of new folks and catch up with trade show buddies.  Watching an exhibition hall transform into a “show” is like magic.  When you show up with your booth at the hall the day before the show, the place is a wreck. Booths are under construction, carpet is going down, fork lifts are zooming all over the place, exhibitors are lined up at the show managers booth, bewildered sales people are trying to get their bearings, and haggard and cranky union workers are trying to get the whole illusion assembled by the approaching deadline.

Trade shows are venues where buyers meet sellers in bulk.  Buyers show up in droves to walk a few acres of floor space crammed with vendors showing their wares. Everyone is in full schmooze configuration. There is an abundance of literature and business bling. Most booths are 10′ x 10′ with rear curtains and some trade show furniture. Smaller companies bring booths that they assemble featuring a display frame, lights, and velcro panels. Larger companies pay to have the union guys assemble an expensive architectural wonder complete with meeting rooms and, in the EU, a bar with bartender.

Lots of wheeling and dealing gets done by those buyers that come to actually buy on the spot. A great many buyers are there to window shop and go back to the office to ruminate on their decision. 

What is less well known outside of this circle is that a good deal of competitive intelligence is being done as well.  Everyone wants to know who the competition is. Lots of browsing and innocent questions.  Competitor pricing is the magic that everyone wants.  But this information can be hard to get. In the specialty chemical world, prices are often given by quotation to qualified parties. Qualified in this context means that the query originates from a party who is actually in need of the material rather than the wiley competitor trying to get an edge in pricing.

Some trade show organizers will have a high paid speaker talk to the show attendees.  I was once on the “A-List” to get tickets to meet the speakers at a small social hour before the show.  I got to have an actual conversation with James Carville, Mary Matlin, Terry Bradshaw, and Robert Reich. It was very exciting and enlightening. 

Another side benefit of being in sales is the chance to dine in some excellent restaurants. When at a tade show, it is always best to get your reservations in early. All of the best seats in town get taken. 

At a trade show in Vegas a few years back, our hall was next to a room being used for auditions for some transvestite series for cable TV. I recall walking down the hall at the Sands past a long line of “ladies” waiting for their turn at audition.  They were dressed to kill. It’s Vegas, baby.  The details of some other events will stay with me to the grave.

A few years ago at a plastics show at the McCormick center in Chicago I counted 6 multilayer extrusion machines blowing film, multiple PET bottle machines running, and numerous die extrusion systems operating. People waited in line for an hour to get a free lawn chair.

Favorite destinations? Paris, London, New Orleans, San Francisco, Milano (beware pick pockets!), Basel, Seattle, Berlin, Bangkok, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Manchester.

In Manchester we had to walk the gauntlet past a mob of angry protestors in front of the trade show- they were pissed about animal testing done by one of the exhibitors. 

Berlin is a fascinating and cosmopolitan city and anyone who enjoys Europe should visit. 

The Flame of Innovation

9 Replies

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.

Keeping it fresh

2 Replies

On occasion I have the chance to do what I really dig- running some new chemistry with the stereo cranked up high.  It can be Joe Green (Verde), Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, or Prairie Home Companion- I don’t care. Th’ Gaussling does love the blues. Opera, surprisingly, is a recent taste.

One circumstance when I can’t listen to tunes is when I’m reading patents- I need all of the focus I can get. I do have an unhealthy interest in patents and patent law. If you are so afflicted, I would recommend visiting the websites of a few law schools like George Mason University Law School. I would also highly recommend the website Patently-O.  The size of the patent law business is amazing. And make no mistake, it is a business.

Anyway, back to the lab.  I spent today doing what turned out to be a fairly tight fractional distillation.  Of course, this gave me an excuse to do GCMS. I love to work out fragmentation patterns in a pathetic effort to understand the side products. A long time ago I invested in McLafferty’s book on mass spec and it was a good investment.  A large number of folks place heavy reliance on the mass spec library on the computer.  If you’re bringing new materials to market, this resource may be of little value.

After a day of watching product drip, drip, drip, I am decompressing with a glass of Old Chubb. Pretty good stuff.

High Purity Life

4 Replies

The world of ppm and lower detection thresholds is a confusing labyrinth of assumptions, equipment quirks, and a place where you definitely can’t confuse accuracy with precision. All of those lovely 9’s queued to the right of the decimal place. I do so want to believe what I see. But so often they are from a tight cluster of bullets away from the bullseye.

For those who must tread in this arcane world, I can only recommend that you find a good analytical lab and get to know the analysts well.  They can fill you in on the sorry truth of sub-ppm detection and quantitation.

The trinity of ICP , quadrapole, and the Blessed Dynode allow access to the innermost ring of analytical hell.  At the sub-ppm level, most of the periodic table begins to stand out of the background. Once apparently pristine material, like a trailer park divorcee, suddenly reveals a sordid history.  Pick your method and stick to it. If you go nosing around with other methodologies, you may be in for a disheartening picture. 

My Dear Libertarian Friends

6 Replies

Something I have learned while working alongside fundamentalist libertarians is this: Libertarianism is a political philosophy that seems to provide a framework for the justification of isolationism and selfishness. It is an economic theory that conveniently validates the inherent stinginess of its adherents. It has an appealing and complex theoretical basis. But like all economic theories, is idealistic and requires universal alignment by the population.

That being said, I agree that the US could use a healthy dose of libertarian pragmatism these days. Government is  far too big and too many resources are being channeled into foreign adventures while the national debt accrues.  Our elected leaders resemble an angry mob with a credit card throwing debt bombs.

But when I hear libertarians talk about their resentment at sharing resources in the form of taxation (or, being forced to share their resources), I can’t help but wonder what is really behind this restrained anger.  All of my libertarian friends have benefited enormously from the infrastructure provided by the pooling of resources. They drive to work on the interstate highways, fly safely in controlled airspace, benefit from the safety provided by the military, learned to read from public school teachers, use the system of currency for their wellbeing, flush their toilets thanks to public sanitary systems, eat safely thanks to the local health department (food safety is a big one), have drugs to treat their illnesses with the help of NIH, and on and on.

Of course there are problems with all of our public institutions, some of them quite serious. But the marketplace is just as prone to corruption as the government. I think that libertarians want to get off the merry-go-round and disconnect from the manditory and expensive socialization that keeps creeping into our lives. I do too sometimes. But it seems painfully obvious that our path to this point has not been all bad and our public institutions have contributed to our stability and well being.

All organizations work better under structural tension- the balance of forces. Libertarianism is a useful counterpoint to liberal socialization and conservative militarism. Like the three legs of a stool, these competing political influences can serve the betterment of our society and keep each other in check.

Precautionary Principle or Precautionary Anxiety

2 Replies

Our technological culture is slipping into a kind of Nanny State where risk aversion has become institutionalized at all levels.  Much of this trend has to do with the Precautionary Principle. I won’t elaborate on it because it well presented elsewhere. 

My concern with the Precautionary Principle is not because I have dismissed the threats of deforestation or extinction or global warming. My concern is not because I believe we should freely and wantonly expose people to chemcials substances.  I am concerned about the effect of this principle on innovation.  I believe it is possible and necessary to maintain our technological advance while minimizing the total environmental insult.

In regard to chemistry, innovation is being made far more difficult because of precautionary anxiety.  Part of the issue is fear of chemicals, or what some have called Chemophobia. Chemophobes know in their heart that “chemicals” are bad. 

Chemophobia is real.  Chemophobia derives from a lack of understanding of the chemical sciences and the meaning of risk.  To the chemophobe, any “chemical” odor is a prelude to cancer or other illness.  Bad smell equals toxic.  Good smell equals safe. However, such conclusions are easily toppled when you consider manure and phosgene. Manure is foul smelling, but not especially toxic. Phosgene is fragrant but highly toxic. Stink and toxicity correlate poorly and are a weak basis to judge safety.

We need to keep safety in a proper perspective. We need to have places where we can handle hazardous chemicals for research and manufacturing. The process of education will filter out those who are uncomfortable with the risks and produce those who are willing to work in such places in order to advance science. Students who have an interest in chemical sciences need to have the chance to work with reactive chemicals without undue constraint. Yes, they need to be in a lab and under the supervision of a trained mentor.  But students need to get experience working with reactive materials in order to develop judgement.

Industrial Life and the Golden Handcuffs

4 Replies

Today is one of those days when I would happily give back half of my pay to return to academics.  Since starting this blog I have waxed rhapsodic about the fabulous world of chemical industry and along the way have hazed and taunted the cloistered world of academia.  Being in industry is like being in the engine room of a ship.  There is comfort in the steady thrumming of the engines and not a little excitement in the scale and power of the thing.

But industry offers a great deal in the way of discomfort as well. Whereas career buoyancy in academia is based on at least some pretense of meritocracy, moving up the pecking order in industry is a more complicated affair.  A productive academic can expect to become tenured and finally promoted to full professor after time in service with some grants, a book, committee work, or a handfull of papers, assuming the student evaluations aren’t too bad.

In industry, it is more about “what have you done for me lately”? Even if you do your best and make progress, there is no assurance that upper level management won’t cancel the project. 

In large corporations, plum jobs are subject to project cancellation or redundancy after a merger.  You can be making great progress on a project and suddenly the word comes down that your division is about to be sold or there is to be a reorganization.  Budgets, requisitions, and staffing are all frozen.  Then the call for early retirements comes out.  Finally, the first wave of layoffs arrives.  If you are a survivor, you are chastened by the experience and resolve to make the company work or die trying.

Eventually you discover that you could work 24/7 and still, your destiny is entirely in the hands of others. Then one morning you are called to a conference room and a sober member of HR has an announcement.  Everyone in the room is to be let go and out of the building by noon. There is a dreadful silence as people attempt to digest what was just said.  You feel the room close in around you and there is a metallic tang on the sides of your tongue. Confusion turns to panic and then to anger. How could they do this?

The HR person drones on about benefits, COBRA, and then reveals that the modest severance package has strings.  In exchange for silence and a clean separation, you will be offered two weeks of pay per year of service as “the package”.

So, you sign the paper and drop off your security card as you leave the room.  As you pack your things into the boxes they have thoughtfully provided, you begin to wonder just how you will make ends meet.  Not 2 hours earlier, you were immersed in the technical details of your project.  How things can change in just a few heartbeats.

Another pickle the mid-career chemist may encounter is the “Golden Handcuffs” scenario.  There are many variations of this phenomenon, but I’ll describe the variation I’m most familiar with.

As you climb the career ladder, you naturally climb the salary scale.  As your salary increases you find that your lifestyle develops expenses that closely match your income.  Eventually, you find that you can’t afford to leave because the starting salary elsewhere is lower. Unless you can be hired in elsewhere at your senior salary, you’re pretty much stuck.

At some point the company finds itself beset with a lot of expensive middle aged managers who will continue to draw heavy salaries for the remainder of their career. So, not only does a mid-career professional face the Golden Handcuffs, but they have a big target on their back during hard financial times at the company.  Mid-career can be a very treacherous time with dangerous shoals to navigate.