• Question: what was the hardest part in working for any of the things you do🪖

    Asked by Wabb1tIsC0ol on 22 Jun 2023. This question was also asked by ..
    • Photo: John Grasmeder

      John Grasmeder answered on 22 Jun 2023:

      In some ways, doing the science, developing a new product is the relatively easy part. Customers are always ready to explore new things. But the difficult bit is getting companies to buy the product once they have explored it – we call this “market adoption”. Most of what we do is to replace metals. So if I am talking to the Chief Engineer at BMW about using our special plastic to replace metal in gears, she will only do this if she is convinced it will be better, cheaper, greener, more reliable than the metal that BMW has been using for the last 80 or 90 years. I call this “the burden of proof”. The same is true at Boeing if we want them to make their planes out of composite, if we want surgeons to use our material in place of metal in knee replacements, and so on.

    • Photo: Alexander De Bruin

      Alexander De Bruin answered on 28 Jun 2023:

      for me it’s figuring out how all the bits of data fit together and then understanding the story that the results tell me.

    • Photo: Ferran Brosa Planella

      Ferran Brosa Planella answered on 29 Jun 2023:

      I think the hardest thing is figuring out what to do. Doing research is like exploring an unknown place, but that’s what makes it exciting too!

    • Photo: Paul Waldron

      Paul Waldron answered on 30 Jun 2023:

      Thinking of new ways of solving old problems. I takes time to get out of my standard mindset/way of thinking, and try and think of new ways of doing things.

    • Photo: Amy Stockwell

      Amy Stockwell answered on 30 Jun 2023:

      Prioritising what to work on. There is a limited amount of time and money and so we can’t do everything.
      I used to work for a manufacturing company. Part of my job was to invent new products and invent ways to make our current products better and cheaper. There were thousands of things that I could do. I had to persuade my managers that the things that I wanted to work on where the most important.

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