I attended the 2018 PDS last week in the outskirts of Chicago. This event is always a great forum to share the latest findings and best practices in process development across industries. I saw a number of common themes emerging from the talks and posters (see the technical program here).
Look inside your organization. Know who is doing something that may help you solve your problem.
Look outside your organization. Is someone else working in an area that could help your project? Could be a great partnering opportunity!
Use data driven gate reviews, and make sure to have a systemic scale-up strategy, rather than a random walk to find results.
Communication is critical. Make sure the key internal and external stakeholders understand the value of your process development activities.
Sustainability targets are real in many organizations, and driving process development objectives.
Persistence and patience is important. It takes time to work through scale-up!
And most importantly, invent and innovate, but do things that matter and can get to market. I learned early in my career that there is no shortage of technical problems to solve, so better to focus on things that can have a sustainable and economic impact.
Thanks to AIChE for putting on a great event!