Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2008, 47, 8517–8525
8517
COMMENTARIES Toward a Sustainable Chemical Industry: Cyclic Innovation Applied to Ionic Liquid-Based Technology Introduction In the Western world, the traditional chemical industry has matured and investments have largely stabilized. One reason is that the lifetime of production plants is much longer than anticipated because of careful maintenance. Another reason is that smart engineering has increased the capacities of existing plants beyond expectation. Today, many current production processes originate from 20 years ago; they are not based on the latest technology. In general, these “outdated” processes produce more waste than necessary and are often very energyintensive. The chemical industry, which uses 10% (50 EJ/year)1 of the total world energy consumption, is under considerable pressure to replace many of the existing processes with new technologies to realize a sustainable production system. This is especially true for the fine chemical and pharmaceutical industries; their processes require a lot of energy2 and generate large amounts of chemical waste3 per kilogram net product (see Table 1). Security of energy supply and environmental concerns call for the use of new technologies. The chemical industry is under considerable political and public pressure to innovate many of its existing processes, ultimately aiming at a zero environmental footprint (zero emission, zero-waste generation, low and green energy-consumption). Currently, new chemical production processes are being developed that are more sustainable than what is used now. Despite clear environmental advantages of these technologies, efforts are segmented and time delays are large. The result is that commercialization is lagging behind. The basic idea behind innovation is to successfully bring new (systems of) product-service combinations to the market. No matter how creative the design or how clever the development behind a technological invention may be, it can never be classified as an innovation if the market introduction fails. There is no innovation without customers. In other words, new product-service combinations may only be regarded as innovations if they fulfill explicit or implicit human needs. In this commentary, a new concept for managing innovations is introduced, which avoids disciplinary segmentation and takes the technological, economic, social, and cultural aspects of innovation into account at all stages of the innovation path. It is expected that the concept helps to accelerate many different types of process innovations in the chemical industry, with full sustainability as the final target.
passion for the future: showing an inspiring Vision that serves as a beacon for the entire organization, detecting early changes in the market (as an integral part of societal transitions), turning such changes into opportunities for the company, and convincing shareholders that the right direction is being followed. Leadership must also be strategic: clarifying the leading principles along the transition path, choosing integrated project teams, defining the required in-house competencies, and showing how to combine those with others (who do I need to collaborate with?). And, last but not least, leadership must also aim at organizational capability during execution to make the dream come true: selecting, motivating, connecting, and trusting people to achieve process excellence. Differences in emphasis on the three spokes of the “leadership steering wheel” determine the type of leader. In innovation, motivating people with an inspiring vision is indispensable. Actually, companies begin to realize that innovation is not only necessary for renewing their portfolio of products and services, it is also required to attract and challenge talented employees. In situations with high uncertainty (such as innovation) transition paths may be very unpredictable. Therefore the road to the desired future should be kept wide open to unexpected developments. Complex innovation projects are like adventurous expeditions. The internal ambitions (the business goals) must be clearly defined, but the workflows in the innovation process should be organized in a flexible manner in order to timely react to unforeseen internal and external events. Project organizations that overformalize the innovation process are too rigid, making dynamic steering difficult or even impossible. In the following, we will show that fast progress requires iterative and interdisciplinary workflows along the entire transition path. One important consequence is that the traditional segmented and sequential way of thinking, known as the linear concept, should be replaced by the cyclic paradigm. Double Dynamics around Technological Research Figure 2 shows two linked cycles, forming a double loop with technological research in a central position. The cyclical interaction processes for the development of new technologies take place in the technical-oriented sciences cycle (left-hand side of Figure 2) with the help of a wide range of disciplines from the hard sciences. (Disciplines from the hard sciences include specialist knowledge in the natural and life sciences.) Table 1. World Production Volume,2 Energy Consumption2 and Waste Generation3 per Specific Product within Various Industry Segments
Leading the Innovation Process Figure 1 visualizes the different aspects of leadership that are needed to manage innovative companies.4 Leaders must have a * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: A.J.Berkhout@ tudelft.nl. † Faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering. ‡ Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management. § Faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences.
industry segment
production (tons/annum)
energy use (MJ) per kg product
oil refining bulk chemicals fine chemical industry pharmaceutical industry
106-109 104-107 102-104
0.5-10 5-30 20-100
