The seven stages of chemical technology from idea to industrialization (Issue 9/100) -- Idea Pool

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This post was last edited by xiouxingzhe on 2026-6-23 at 15:22. Seven stages of chemical technology from idea to industrialization (Issue 9/100). The idea pool – a place to store inspiration. Dear friends: Hello everyone! In the first four issues, we discussed all five sources of inspiration: experimental accidents, theoretical deductions, literature insights, industry pain points, and cross-disciplinary applications. Today let’s talk about a very practical question: When inspiration strikes, how do you capture it? My own experience is that inspiration is a very slippery thing. It comes without saying hello, and it goes without saying goodbye. Today at the construction site, you noticed something interesting and thought, “I’ll look into it later” – but once things got busy, you forgot about it. Three months later, I encountered the same problem; I vaguely remembered having seen it somewhere before, but I just couldn’t recall the details. So I developed a habit: giving inspiration a fixed “storage place.” I call it the “Creativity Pool”. I. What is a creative pool? Essentially, a creative pool is a place dedicated to storing ideas. It can be a notebook, a spreadsheet, a memo—the form doesn’t matter; what’s important is that it must exist. When inspiration comes, you have a place to catch it ； When you need inspiration, you have a place to turn to. There is a principle here that it took me a long time to understand: when inspiration strikes, the first thing to do is not to evaluate it, but to record it. Why? Because when inspiration first arises, your judgment may not necessarily be reliable. A good idea might seem \"unreliable\" to you because it challenges your existing experiences” ； An average idea might seem \"reliable\" to you simply because it fits within your existing way of thinking. Screening during the recording phase – this screening mechanism itself may be the problem. So the rule I set for myself is: at this stage, just focus on capturing without judging. Leave the evaluation to the next stage—innovation incubation—to be carried out systematically. What should I write? No need for a long explanation. For each idea, it’s sufficient to note three things: first, a brief description of the phenomenon. What did you see, hear, and think? Be as specific as possible; instead of just writing “the yield is low,” state “the yield is 45%, which is about 15 percentage points lower than the normal value.” Second, the conditions at that time. Temperature, pressure, feed rate, time... remember as much as you can. When you look back in the future, this conditional information will be more valuable than the conclusions. Third, initial association. What do you think this might mean? What is it related to? What are the possible explanations? There’s a little trick here that I find very useful: write the “phenomenon” and the “explanation” separately. For example, you shouldn’t just write “Yield is low – possibly due to insufficient catalyst activity.” You should write: “Yield is 45%, about 15 percentage points lower than the normal value (phenomenon).” The temperature curve is normal, and the feeding rate remains unchanged (conditions). Preliminary assumption: The catalytic system may experience mass transfer limitations under these conditions (assumption). ” Why is this distinction important? Because when you look back in the future, phenomena are objective and do not change ； But the initial assumption at that time might have been wrong. By separating the two, you won’t be disturbed by the initial misjudgment, and can rethink things starting from the original phenomena. II. How to manage the creative pool – just writing it down is not enough. If a creative pool is merely a graveyard where things are remembered only to be forgotten, then it’s almost the same as not remembering them at all. I have a few small habits of my own. First, review it at least once a week. It doesn’t take long; just a few dozen minutes is enough. As you go through them, you’ll find that some ideas start to connect with each other, some become more valuable with new information, while others naturally fade away. Those that fade away naturally indicate that they were probably just fleeting thoughts in the first place, and it’s not a loss to lose them. Second, label the ideas. I use three-dimensional tags myself. First, classification by source: Where did this idea come from? Is it an accidental observation from experiments, theoretical derivation, literature correlation, industry pain points, or cross-domain transplantation? This classification is not meant for neat archiving, but to help you identify your own “advantageous trigger channels”. When looking through your pool of ideas, you might find that 70% of them stem from associations drawn from existing literature, with hardly any coming from firsthand experience – which suggests that you should probably spend more time on the ground these days. The same is true in reverse. Second, classification by technical field: Does this idea relate to reaction engineering, separation engineering, catalytic materials, process control, or safety and environmental protection? A creative can have multiple tags. The value of this dimension lies in the fact that, after some time when you review the pool of ideas, the ideas accumulated under the same technical area may already be able to be combined to form a technical roadmap. A few ideas on “how to reduce distillation energy consumption” combined together can form a complete heat-pump distillation solution. Third is marking by maturity level: Category A – worthy of in-depth study in the near future ； Category B – Interesting, but more information is needed to make a judgment ； Category C – Temporarily suspended but not deleted. This marker is dynamic and can be re-evaluated each time it is viewed. A Class C idea may be upgraded to Class A after new information becomes available – for example, if you read a paper that happens to confirm the feasibility of a previous Class C idea. With these three tags, the creative pool transforms from a chaotic pile of ideas into a searchable and interconnected repository of materials. Of course, this tagging system doesn’t need to be fully developed from the start; it’s possible to begin with the simplest source tags and add more to them gradually. Third, do “creative connection exercises” regularly. This method sounds a bit like \"forcing a match,\" but I think it is indeed a good way to develop innovative thinking. The specific approach is to, at regular intervals, randomly select two ideas from the pool of ideas coming from different sources and fields, and force oneself to identify any possible connections between them within ten minutes – could an idea from field A be applied to idea B? Can an abnormal phenomenon in an experiment be explained using the approach of deriving it from another theory? This method may seem a bit forced, but after doing it many times, it will gradually change your way of thinking. Many truly original technical solutions begin with such connections that \"seem unrelated but share an underlying logical relationship\". A good practice for managing a creative pool is to review it once a week and conduct creative connection exercises once a month. The inspiration-driven phase is not something that ends once it has been captured; it is an ongoing process. Allowing creativity to collide and ferment within a framework can sometimes be more effective than seeking new inspiration outside. Preview for the next issue: Issue 10 – Closing of Phase 1: How the idea for MVR technology came about. Five issues will be dedicated to five sources of inspiration, with one issue focusing on the pool of ideas. In the next issue, we will use the origins of the inspiration for the MVR brackish water concentration technology as a conclusion to the first phase – a real-world example of finding a solution through cross-disciplinary technologies, driven by cost-related challenges. Having discussed this, the first phase, “Inspiration-Driven,” comes to an end, and we move on to the second phase, “Innovation Incubation.” Table of Contents link: Seven-Stage Model of Chemical Technology from Idea to Industrialization (Issue 100) – Table of Contents (updated in real time)