Two Extreme Models Of R&D

Most companies exist somewhere on a spectrum between these two extremes

Hey Everyone,

If you haven’t noticed I’ve split the newsletter into three different categories. This category of the newsletter is focused on what it means to be a career scientist and I’m drawing from my own experiences, stories people tell me, and questions I’m interested in answering. I’m nearly at the end of being an early career scientist and I’m trying to ask the question, “what’s next?” If you think a collection of this writing together would be worth paying for perhaps I’ll turn it into a book—let me know.

In my time as an early career scientist I’ve been fortunate enough to work as an industry scientist with and without a PhD and in my limited experience I’ve also gotten to experience start-ups, medium to large chemical companies, and even a family run business. In all of this time I’ve been working within the function of “research and development,” or “product development,” or “innovation.” All of these things are essentially the same it just really revolves around what model of product development the company you are working for decides to implement.

Model 1 - Team Of Specialists

The first model is something that I think we can all relate to through popular culture. It’s the model of the scientists are in the lab wearing lab coats doing experiments 75% of the day. Think of the popular depictions of scientists in movies and TV shows wearing white lab coats (no stains) talking to each other in laboratory settings. While these depictions I believe are usually not realistic they do capture this sense of a lot of working being done in a laboratory by scientists.

The first model is really focused on the scientists being in the lab. This is what I got to experience when I was working in a start-up company. I spent the majority of my time in the lab shoulder to shoulder with the PhD level scientists. If I was at my computer I spent my time in excel crunching data or coming up with new experiments to try. I remember at one point being surrounded by petroleum ether in a hood trying to isolate a specific pre-polymer and the founder walks in the lab and said something along the lines of, “you really look like you are busy Tony.”

I hear of this model outside of the start-up world really being implemented in the much larger centralized R&D functions of large companies at places such as Dow or Henkel. The scientists are often focused on doing good science and spending their time getting results. This model requires the other functions such as marketing, sales, and EH&S to be very good at their jobs. Further, in my experience and in the experience of others that I’ve spoken to this model of R&D does not interface often with the other functions in the company.

When To Use Model 1

Often, these R&D teams are comprised of specialists within their skillset. You might have a synthetic polymer chemist working with an analytical chemist and a polymer physicist to figure out something fundamental with reactive extrusion. You might group a metabolic engineer with a downstream process engineer and an analytical scientist if you are doing strain development to ferment a high value target molecule. All of these teams are comprised of true specialists and they are often supported by a lot of technicians handling routine and “known” work.

A core tenant to this model is that the company has the money to hire true specialists to collaborate and figure out very challenging problems worth a lot of money. If you want to bring something industry changing or world changing then Model 1 is perfect. If you are a start-up trying to bring a completely new technology into the world then Model 1 will likely get you 85-95% of the way there. If you are stuck on a problem such your initial product fails in some spectacular way that you don’t want it to and you need to fix it then Model 1 is the way I would advise you to go.

If none of the scenarios above sound like your company or what you want to do with your life long term then consider Model 2.

Model 2 - Jack Of All Trades

Post PhD, I’ve gotten to experience what I call Model 2. We can think of this model of R&D as the expanding job. Anne Helen Peterson describes this succinctly in The Expanding Job:

In many organizations, particularly anywhere where a consultant has been called in to “trim the fat,” the jobs that ensured that work was performed smoothly and without overload have been eliminated, the essential components of their job descriptions added onto those that remained. To look back at the last forty years of corporate layoffs is to watch so many employers forget — or be convinced to forget — that fat has an essential purpose.

The passage above in particular made me reflect about my own current and past jobs. How it has often expanded to fill the voids of the people that used to work with me. I’m no novice when it comes to layoffs and this shit happens to people in the chemical industry all the time. I don’t think anyone in a chemical company is “safe,” from being trimmed or asked to leave and this includes executive leadership and the board of directors.

A comment on my own post by a reader when I was writing about how the chemical industry is trying to rebrand itself also struck me as very accurate:

You may consider drawing parallels between the Chemical Industry and the Auto Industry...Old commodity, no place to go but cut to the bone or rebrand into "solutions"

We can think of Model 2 for R&D being minimal staff supporting existing business while maybe figuring out something incremental in their spare time. The best mass media equivalent I can think of here is how we meet Scotty in the rebooted Chris Pine Star Treks:

Essentially, a talented engineer with one buddy out on some remote ice station doing routine work with minimal to no support. Sure, this is an over exaggeration, but I think it speaks to what is asked of scientists and engineers now at mature chemical companies. Do more with less.

As companies are pushed to bring value to shareholders short term this means that they have to keep delivering profitable growth despite competition from new entrants into the markets, cheaper substitutes, supply chain disruptions, and more innovative companies (essentially all of Porter’s five forces). As opposed to reinvesting profits, which might not have a clear and measurable return, mature companies tend to cut costs or “trim the fat.”

As costs go down and profits marginally go up the remaining employees, especially in the product focused groups, tend to bear larger burdens. I remember one R&D director I used to work for wanted all of the chemists that reported up through him to be cross-trained on each others work and to have both “innovation” and “technical service” projects so that it was hard to justify trimming anyone on the team.

Working in this sort of “expanding role” means that you get to do a lot of different things that is typically reserved for the other roles such as product management, marketing, EH&S, supply chain, procurement, engineering, and more. The reason you are doing the other function’s jobs is often because there are not enough people in those functions to do everything that needs to get done.

Eventually, you might find yourself as the lone scientist or R&D person supporting $70 million dollars in revenue while also being expected to come up with the “next best thing” to beat out your competition. When these people leave they are often impossible to replace because of their both broad and deep domain expertise. You can’t just go out to the job market and say, “give me an expert in XYZ that is willing to accept average pay to do a very difficult job.”

These two models are definitely extremes, but I guess I’ve had more experience with being closer to Model 2 as opposed to Model 1. Where on the spectrum between these two models is your current company?

Tony