(77e) Toward Faster Commercialization of New Materials

Successful commercialization of new materials is notoriously difficult, often taking 10+ years to recover development investments.  While materials may never reach the commercialization speeds of many consumer products, they can be significantly improved.  This presentation will expose the pitfalls of commercialization, along with practical suggestions for avoiding them, showing practices to shorten the commercialization time of new materials by up to 50%.    It will draw on both rigorous analysis of historical plastics and lessons learned from the development dozens of launch strategies.

Bio of presenter: Christopher Musso is a principal in McKinsey's Chemicals and Product Development practices.  He leads the Firm's work on commercialization of new materials, and has done ~20 commercialization projects for leading chemicals players, ranging from bio-based plastics to new commodity variants to high-end specialty plastics.  He specializes in developing market insight for new applications and creating new business models to maximize penetration while minimizing commercialization time.  He holds a PhD in Technology, Management, and Policy from MIT, where he studied the commercialization patterns of plastic and developed a model that has underpinned much of his work at McKinsey. In addition to his PhD, Chris holds Master’s degrees in Materials Science, Business Administration, and Technology Policy, all from MIT, where he was a Leaders for Manufacturing Fellow.  He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Manufacturing from Brigham Young University.  He has published several papers on materials engineering and innovation in both popular and refereed journals.