Business Chemistry

Preface

Marketing‐, R&D‐, and production‐related activities need to be orchestrated with the architecture of a firm’s business model to build, grow, and sustain a chemical company in today’s competitive environment. This orchestration inevitably requires that chemists, chemical engineers, and other R&D experts acquire business skills from the fields of strategy and innovation to jointly create value with marketers, business developers, and executives with backgrounds in business administration. Consequently, there is a growing demand in the chemical industry for trained specialists who not only have a solid chemical knowledge but also a good understanding of the underlying management processes. What is needed are experts in both chemistry and business – business chemists.

Business Chemistry is a practitioner‐oriented book that grew from this demand. It takes the characteristics of the chemical industry (e.g., research intensity, business‐to‐business relationships) into consideration while introducing experts with backgrounds in science and engineering to the most relevant and latest managerial topics for the chemical industry and related sectors, such as biotechnology, consumer products, and pharmaceuticals. The book is structured into two parts. The first part deals with key topics from the field of strategy, such as industry‐specific challenges impacting strategy formulation and execution, as well as analytical methods and concepts of strategic analysis applied by chemical ...