1.1 What Is This Book About?
The fundamental impact of the chemical industry is pervasive throughout the world. Every product, material, and object we own or use owes its existence in some way to this vital sector. Our food supply, medicines, clothing, and mobile devices all depend on chemistry. Even products or services that upon first glance do not obviously involve chemistry undoubtedly do for some secondary purpose such as their storage, transportation, or delivery [1]. In addition, the chemical industry plays a dominant role in the global economy, being responsible for more than $5 trillion in revenue and 20 million jobs worldwide [2]. It has broadly contributed to our technological progress over the last 200 years.
The industry has also brought problems that are increasingly recognized as “must solve” to ensure long‐term human health along with environmental, economic, and even geopolitical stability. Examples include the intrinsic safety of chemicals available in the marketplace, hazardous materials released into the environment during manufacture, and the materials' use and disposal, all of which are receiving more attention than ever before [3]. This also unsurprisingly coincides with the increasing number of peer‐reviewed, data‐driven reports demonstrating negative long‐term effects on the planet and its inhabitants [4]. Climate change and masses of nonrecyclable plastics littering the ocean are just two obvious examples.
These challenges are daunting but not insurmountable, especially as there is no shortage of technical innovations and advances in sustainable chemistry emerging from around the world. The academic community is constantly discovering promising new chemical technologies, and more importantly entrepreneurs are becoming empowered and encouraged to bring them to market. This is imperative as any anticipated or quantified sustainable benefit associated with a given technology will never realize its potential while it remains a laboratory‐scale research project. In other words, it is only through the development, scale‐up, and commercial deployment of sustainable chemical technologies that these challenges can be overcome. The issue at hand is how to advance a promising technology down the development path to the point where it has been validated, demonstrated to be economically competitive, and scaled to meet customer demand. Unlike large multinationals with sizable resources to address commercialization challenges, the entrepreneur developing a sustainable chemical technology is severely resource limited and faces significant barriers. When it comes to raising the required funds, they are often trapped in a catch‐22 situation: funding requires validation and scale, while validation and scale require funding.
It is the entrepreneur who will undoubtedly play a crucial role in deploying the required technologies that ensure we maintain our quality of life while not robbing future generations of the same [5]. This is the essence of sustainability. Multinational companies will continue to invest and innovate, but their resources are not infinite, and “out‐of‐the‐box” thinking and nonincremental solutions often pose a challenge to bureaucratic and conservative corporations that must answer to their shareholders [6]. Many large companies today recognize this position and are looking to support and partner with start‐ups developing attractive technologies. One could argue that the future success of larger companies is at least in part dependent on the success of these entrepreneurs.
The environmental challenges associated with the chemical industry can be met by providing the budding entrepreneur with the training and skills needed to commercialize a sustainable chemistry technology. There is a significant knowledge gap between how to conceive and test an innovation and how to actually get it to market. We created this book to help address this gap. The skills required to create, operate, and grow a company are generally not part of the curriculum in current chemistry or engineering programs. While elements may be taught in more progressive departments, it is certainly not in any comprehensive manner. Relevant courses and training programs for the budding entrepreneur are becoming increasingly available, but these are not chemistry‐specific and may be deemed a distraction to the student focused on their research projects. In addition, there is often trepidation on the part of chemists to take advantage of these offerings as they are often far removed from their past experiences.
This book will describe the steps, decision points, and hurdles faced by innovators developing sustainable chemical technologies and offer practical tactics and strategies for confronting them. This includes aspects of product/process development, scale‐up, market landscape analysis, regulatory frameworks, strategic partnering, intellectual property management, and financing.
To the best of our knowledge, there is currently no other book on the market that addresses this broad topic. Many texts have been published about the general commercialization of technologies [7]. However, few target the chemical innovator, and none is specific to the commercial deployment of sustainable technologies. One of our overarching goals in preparing this book was not to create a comprehensive, lengthy tome that will just sit on your shelf. Instead, our intention was to offer a relatively concise guide that includes practical advice as you consider taking the entrepreneurial path.
Overall, the purpose of this book is to provide the following:
- Awareness and information on the many steps required to commercialize a sustainable chemical technology
- Guidance for making appropriate strategic choices when creating and subsequently growing a new venture
- Motivation and inspiration via success stories of early‐stage companies that have been effectively passing through the various stages of technology commercialization
1.2 What Is a Sustainable Chemical Technology?
It is important to establish how we have chosen to define a “sustainable” chemical technology. Definitions abound, and controversies have arisen over linguistic nuances [8]. One basic definition (described in Chapter 3) is provided by the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD), which defines sustainable chemistry as “a scientific concept that seeks to improve the efficiency with which natural resources are used to meet human needs for chemical products and services.” However, trade associations, individual companies, governments, and many nongovernment organizations all have variously differing definitions – many in ways that (not surprisingly) lend credence to their own mandate or beliefs. The term “green” also has numerous definitions and is applied, sometimes incorrectly, synonymously [9, 10].
For the purpose of this book, we will use a relatively simple definition: a sustainable chemical technology offers a demonstrated environmental benefit(s) while remaining economically competitive with existing technologies. This is a broad definition as it addresses three key elements.
The first is most obviously the demonstrated environmental benefit. A chemical technology can be deemed “sustainable” if it benefits at least one aspect of the environment. Examples include protecting the environment by using technologies that improve water‐use efficiency and treatment and reducing waste material production and release. These benefits can also present themselves in technologies that are not intrinsically environmental in nature but serve a...
