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This post was last edited by xiouxingzhe on 2026-6-23 at 15:23. Seven stages of chemical technology from idea to industrialization (Issue 11/100). Keeping unviable approaches out of the laboratory at the lowest cost. Dear friends: Hello everyone! Starting from this issue, we enter the second phase — innovation incubation. In the first phase, we discussed how to capture inspiration and how to build a creative pool. By the end of the first phase, you may have accumulated quite a few ideas in your creative pool. Dozens of records, some stemming from experimental anomalies, some from literature references, and some from practical challenges on the ground. Some of these ideas appear briefly and are never considered again, while others keep coming to mind as you think about them, and it seems like they have potential. Now a decision needs to be made: which one is worth investing real money in to test? This decision cannot be based on intuition. It seems the most unreliable at the lab door—it either makes you overly optimistic about a direction that won’t work, or causes you to overlook a real opportunity. What you need to do is develop a set of arguments—using both scientific and business approaches, with both paths moving forward simultaneously. Both lines have passed, then we’ll decide to move forward. If any one of them fails, give it up decisively. Before delving into the specific methods of argumentation, in this issue I would like to first discuss the most fundamental concept at this stage: keeping those approaches that are not viable out of the laboratory at the lowest possible cost. I. Conduct a screening process before increasing investments. By this point in the seven-stage model, your investments are still quite small. What was spent in the first phase? Time, reading, some thoughts, a pen and a piece of paper. In the second phase – market research, literature review, and desk studies – the investment is still mainly in human effort and time, with virtually no significant financial expenditure involved. But starting from the third phase, every effort invested begins to yield tangible results. Laboratory equipment, chemical reagents, analysis and testing, as well as the setup and operation of pilot-scale devices. In the fourth phase, the human costs associated with preparing the process package and the purchase of process simulation software. By the fifth and sixth stages, costs for design, equipment procurement, civil construction and installation, as well as commissioning and testing – all these require investments in the tens of millions or even hundreds of millions. This creates a very clear logic: the later the stage, the greater the investment. So the further forward one goes, the more one must be willing to try and fail, and to start over. The further forward we go, the more cautious decisions need to be made and stricter control is required. The location of the second phase is very special. It is the last stage before the surge in investment, during which judgments can be made at a very low cost. Spending an extra month on validation during the innovation incubation phase can save months or even years of detours down the road. Why do many projects get stuck in trouble later on? Looking back, it is often the case that the arguments that should have been made at this stage were not thoroughly addressed. If you talk to the team, they might say, “We thought it should be fine at the time.” “The word \"think\" is, in the chemical industry, the most common and also the most dangerous term used to cover up hidden dangers. II. The willingness to give up requires more courage than the willingness to invest. At this stage, I think what tests a person the most is not technical skill, but psychological resilience. Many people have feelings about the ideas in the idea pool. I’ve spent a long time pondering an idea, read a certain document over and over again; when I talked about it with friends, they all thought it was \"very imaginative\" – and I just couldn’t bring myself to give up on it. I have had this mindset too. But looking back on all these years of working on projects, resources are always limited. The R&D investment for a medium-sized fine chemicals project can easily amount to millions. Rather than spreading your money and manpower across three \"possible\" options, it’s better to concentrate them on one \"highly viable\" option. I’ve seen some rather unfortunate projects; it wasn’t that the technical approach didn’t work, but rather that three different approaches were pursued at the same time, with each one only being implemented to 60% of its potential. As a result, none of them were good enough to convince either themselves or investors. Time ran out, money was spent, and the project team disbanded. Subtraction is a quality that is scarce but highly valuable at this stage. Giving up does not equal failure. Giving up means focusing your limited resources on one goal that must be achieved, rather than spreading them across countless hypothetical possibilities. There is another mindset that I see quite often, and it’s worth mentioning separately: “I’ve already invested a lot of time in preliminary research in this area; it would be a shame to give up now.” ”This mindset has a specific name in behavioral economics: the sunk cost fallacy – time and effort that have already been invested should not be a reason to continue investing further. The only criterion for your decision should be whether it is still worth investing in this direction moving forward from today. Past investments, no matter how large, have already been lost and should not affect your decisions going forward. The principle is simple to state, but difficult to put into practice. I have also paid the fees for this kind of training myself, and it is precisely because I have done so that I have a deeper understanding of this matter. III. The two screens at this stage: What needs to be done in the second stage is, in simple terms, to go through the elements in the pool of ideas using two screens. The first filter is the argumentation of scientific concepts. Is this idea scientifically valid? Is there any violation of the fundamental laws in thermodynamics? Are there any fatal theoretical flaws? If it’s not scientifically valid, there’s no need to proceed further. The second filter is the business concept validation. Even if it’s scientifically feasible, is it worth doing? How big is the market? What is the competitive landscape like? Can the preliminary cost estimate pass? If the accounts don’t add up, no matter how good the technology is, it’s of no use. Both screens passed – Go, proceed to the third stage. If any filter isn’t met, abandon it outright and redirect resources toward more promising avenues. This logic of “dual screening” will be explored in detail in the upcoming issues. We will go through in detail, episode by episode, how to conduct scientific reasoning, how to do the calculations for business arguments, and how to use a Go/No-Go matrix to make comprehensive decisions. Preview for the next issue: Issue 12 – Justifying Scientific Concepts: How to Turn Vague Ideas into Verifiable Scientific Questions. When selecting an idea from a pool of possibilities, the first thing to do is not to conduct experiments, but rather to clarify that idea. “\"Can we develop a more energy-efficient distillation scheme?“ — this is not a scientific question. “Can a heat pump be used to replace steam in order to reduce the energy consumption of distillation towers by 30%? — That’s what matters. Next time, we’ll discuss how to define problems and how to formulate falsifiable scientific hypotheses. Table of Contents link: Seven-Stage Model of Chemical Technology from Idea to Industrialization (Issue 100) – Table of Contents (updated in real time)