Hope you have been having a fabulous July so far. As I signed off last month, I left you with a thought on the research process and how that can impact your career. Let’s continue from there.
Hope you have been having a fabulous July so far. As I signed off last month, I left you with a thought on the research process and how that can impact your career. Let’s continue from there.
As I pulled a recent issue of the journal Biochemistry and read an interesting article, I paused and thought, “did the authors really plan the experiments in the sequence in which the article has been written?” Although the authors might have followed the exact path described, I felt, the most likely scenario is that they did several different experiments with one or few hypotheses and then analyzed the data, wrote a draft/outline of a manuscript, then redesigned some experiments to fill in the gaps.
Unfortunately, the data might not have fit the hypotheses completely, so they slightly “corrected” their hypotheses, checked for consistency with all the data, literature and completed any “last” experiments to close the article. Now there was a good story to share and it read like a seamless masterpiece that is waiting to be blessed (or bashed) by the review process before the world sees it.
Wait… you just got really entangled reading about a complex and time consuming process of research, review and publications. Where does the “aah” moment really kick in? Often it is the later stage of the process. Rarely does it occur at the very beginning of the process. More important is to recognize that these moments of serendipitous flow occur only after long and focused work for several hours on the problem. So, successful research is a combination of hard, focused work and “luck” in the form of unexpected insights (“aahs”). As none other than Louis Pasteur put it tersely over a century ago, “Luck favors the trained mind.”
How does this affect your career in consumer products research? You could be thinking, “Who would not love to get more of the unexpected insights that could help solve problems in research?” You are one hundred percent correct. The ability to get the “aah” insights early on is something that can help you a lot in industry, especially the consumer products industry.
Unlike academia where one has (in general) more time to research on one or two topics, in industry a scientist simultaneously works in multiple projects/areas. So, if you can move the aah moment to an earlier period in the time scale of research, you could benefit significantly. In one way, this is like the golden principle of 80 for 20 (Pareto principle), yet this is different because we are not talking of an analytical solution, rather a creative one.
The good news, however, is this skill is something that you can develop. Developing this skill requires that you wake up at 4.00 a.m. each day, drink a magic potion, learning to play quidditch and then with your wand… I was just kidding. All it takes is some planning (thinking), discipline, practice and tenfold more of practice! Although I am relatively new to the industry, I have heard (learned) a lot from very seasoned professionals and here is an example of how some experts approach a problem/project.
Once you have identified your research area, identify the key leaders (3-4 names) in the area and find out their recent patents, reviews, book chapters, articles and spend some quality time reading them. Look for the general themes and patterns. This seems like investing years in reading but, most often, it takes only a few tens of hours to do this if have sliced your questions to small, manageable research topics.
Now identify where the problem you would like to address lies in the knowledge field you have just gathered. Usually, your problem will either be a gap or a special conditional class. That understanding (defining) the problem half solves it holds very true for consumer products research and innovation. Thus spending significant amount of time in planning and refining your questions is critical. Try spending ~20-30% of the time on a project in planning.
Now design proof of concept experiments to assess if it is worth spending the time on these questions and problem. Once you have crossed this phase, you can invest more time and effort. After being at this phase for some quality time, ask questions, brainstorm with yourself and your team. All these later stages do take up ~60% of the time.
Then comes one of the most important aspects, engage yourself and your team in rest and distraction. Take a good rest after you have worked and even engage in some constructive distractions like physical exercise or hiking in nature… you have created a fertile ground for the “aah” moments to bloom. There is no guarantee that you will have an “aah” moment after you follow these steps, but it can make the probability higher. Give it a try!
It’s now time for me to rest and prepare for an “aah” moment. Maybe for you too! See you next time…
