“Current chemical data analysis is currently too isolated, requires too much training, or is limited to manually reading through journals. A scalable solution means more brains can find more scientific nuances and design more solutions that tackle more problems, which disrupt more markets.”
R&D is full of unknowns. By the time you learn that a competitor has brought a new product to market, your team could already be months – or even years – behind. At the ideation stage of R&D, your team might pursue thousands of potential projects. How can you tell which one will be your next blockbuster? Moreover, The pressure to deliver positive, measurable ROI for innovation activity has never been more intense. But as with every challenge worth taking on, there are game plans that make winning immeasurably more likely.
By making patent search and analysis accessible and usable for non-IP experts, PatSnap provides scientists with a new source of information for use during research. The company has brought together the biggest IP dataset in the world – more than 120 million patents – which also includes licensing and litigation data, economic data, patent valuation, image and chemical formula search, trademark recognition and more. Moreover, by making this data accessible and relevant to all – whether expert in IP, or completely new to the world of intellectual property – scientists can follow the latest developments and multiple strands of previous research, and avoid wasting time on previously unsuccessful avenues.
Dr. Ali Hussein, Product Director of PatSnap has a deep focus on unlocking the insights that big data and empowering decision-making workflows for the “citizen innovator” by simplifying the analysis of big data. He is passionate about upgrading innovation workflows, and the application of disruption innovation that software can empower across technology areas. We spoke to him ahead of his presentation at CIEX – Chemical Innovation Exchange in Frankfurt on September 20th.
How do you define innovation?
Innovation is the entrepreneurial drive to understand the ‘consumer’ problems with current capabilities in the market, followed by inventing and marketing new concepts and inventions to advance towards a solution. Innovation is not limited to products, but can therefore be extended to business models, economic mechanisms, and social attitudes.
Where does innovation stand among your priorities and responsibilities?
We believe, like many others in attendance I’m sure, that innovation is of the highest importance to ensure long-term success, or even survival of our vision. By remaining in an innovation-centric mindset, companies continue to advance towards their visions and redisrupt their markets – providing more lucrative rewards and long-term stability.
As much as there are examples of how companies have fallen due to not continuously redisrupting their markets and innovating (Blackberry, Kodak, Blockbuster, etc.), there are examples of highly profitable companies that have continuously redisrupted markets and reaped rewards (Apple, TEVA, Amazon etc.).
What are the major challenges and opportunities facing the chemical industry / chemical value chain in 2018 – 2019?
One of the main opportunities within the chemical industry is learning from faster growing industries, and translating practices over. The history of the chemical industry is full of stories of serendipitous discovery of secondary uses for chemicals and the discovery of lucrative chemicals. A major opportunity, which many chemical companies present are already tapping into, is driving product development and discovery with the exponential data resources available.
How and why is it essential to bring together innovation data and scientific information into one single and easily searchable interface?
In short: Capacity, but in an innovator’s time, attention, and memory. When the workflow of chemical research is split across tens of databases with different designs and different database structures, understanding the bigger picture is incredibly difficult.
What is the one key point that attendees should take from your talk?
The key obstacle to letting engineers innovate bigger and faster is scaling this empowerment to as many of them as possible. Current chemical data analysis is currently too isolated, requires too much training, or is limited to manually reading through journals. A scalable solution means more brains can find more scientific nuances and design more solutions that tackle more problems, which disrupt more markets.
Along with PatSnap, several specialty chemical companies and consumer brands such as Air Liquide, Avantium, Biovia, BMW, Evonik, Henkel, Honeywell UOP, Oriflame, P&G, PepsiCo are confirmed to speak at CIEX 2017 on Sep 19-20 to explore innovation strategies and processes across the chemical value chain. Full details of the event can be found at ciex-eu.org.
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