One of the presentations I saw at a recent industry event was on a rare topic: A technological trial that had not succeeded. After the presentation, a delegate mentioned to me that their company had been considering the same approach and would now reconsider. They were grateful to the presenter for saving them considerable time, money and stress.
This got me thinking. How many others - who might not have not seen the presentation - are currently attempting the same failed approach? How many thousands of innovations that looked great on paper but failed to stand-up to the real world are currently languishing in R&D departments around the world? Both are impossible to tell.
By extension, what if there was a way to communicate concepts in our sector that never got off the ground? Would it speed up technological development? This certainly seems like a sensible suggestion and perhaps one that is worth pursuing. It would work by directing efforts away from dead-ends towards more promising avenues.
When I worked in a research laboratory, we often joked that it would be great to have a hypothetical Journal of Dead-End Chemistry, or J. Dead. Chem. to use its correct abbreviation. However, we concluded that - in our area at least - the approaches that didn’t work vastly outnumbered those that did, which would lead to an impossibly large number of articles, not to mention a very stressed editor!
And herein lies just one of the problems with publishing negative results. While J. Dead. Chem. might just about work in academia, a hypothetical Journal of Dead-End Gypsum (J. Dead. Gyps.) would have to consider a highly-competitive business environment that adds additional hurdles. There are intellectual property rights and jumpy legal departments. What if the company is sitting on a failure that might be relevant in 10 or 20 years’ time? We also have to consider relentlessly-positive marketing departments that are averse to highlighting even the smallest of shortcomings. At Global Gypsum, we present ‘customer success stories’ because nobody wants to present ‘customer failure stories.’ We feature Best Available Technology (BAT), not Worst Available Technology (WAT). This leads to an informative picture overall, but one that necessarily lies against a ‘social media-esque’ backdrop, where success appears to be the default outcome. Of course, this simply isn’t true. However you cut it, real-world interests would prevent J. Dead. Gyps. from ever taking off. Just like the ideas it would try to present, J. Dead. Gyps. fails for a reason.
While we might not be able to access a one-stop-shop for aborted missions, there are steps towards increased collaboration between different players in our sector. Eurogypsum is among the organisations that are propelling the sector towards an ever-greener future. It facilitates the sharing of information relevant to and speeding up developments in the most pressing research topic of all - decarbonisation, as well as gypsum recycling and circularity. The same goes for the Gypsum Association in the United States.
But the gypsum and insulation sectors are just at the start of their ‘openness journeys.’ Over in the global cement sector, there’s not one, but two international associations: the World Cement (WCA) and Global Cement & Concrete Association (GCCA), both with big sustainability aims. The GCCA’s ongoing second Innovandi Open Challenge is breaking down the barriers between different parts of the sector with consortia of different suppliers, cement producers and start-ups all working together. In doing so, they are actively speeding up the progress of the sector, albeit one that has a considerably higher environmental burden than gypsum or insulation.
Nevertheless, are we really advancing the sector by allowing time, money and resources to be wasted on things that have already been shown to fail? Is this sustainable? I would argue that it is not. So, while it may be daunting, it would likely be very interesting to be even a little bit more open in the global gypsum and insulation sectors, especially when it comes to what didn’t work. To that end, if you have an article for ‘J. Dead. Gyps.’ that you are brave enough to publish, let me know!
