We have all heard some version of the joke in which a physicist, asked for details about his solution to the poultry production problem he was hired to solve, explains that “it only works, mind you, with spherical chickens in a vacuum”. The anecdote, which reflects physicists’ habit of giving their proposed solutions ideal boundary conditions, extends far beyond the borders of theoretical physics and reaches technological innovation as well.
A paradigmatic case was the “white-rot fungi” project. Behind this (not very sexy) name was a technology that promised to be one of Chile’s great innovation success stories. After a series of successful R&D projects co-funded by the State and large companies and carried out by a university, the fungal strains and their revolutionary method for digesting wood lignin foreshadowed excellent financial and environmental results for the pulp industry by considerably reducing the use of chemicals in pulp bleaching.
However, after more than a billion pesos invested in R&D, patent applications in several parts of the world and the setup of a production plant, the project was finally shut down without ever delivering the promised solution. What happened? Like the physicist in the joke, the technology had been conceived under ideal application conditions. To simplify, it assumed storage yards at the pulp mills where logs were kept in neat rows, allowing an army of workers with brushes to apply the semi-solid paste containing the fungus.
In reality, the logs were piled in heaps, which created a risk for workers, increased implementation costs and caused a general lack of coordination with the rest of the plant’s operations, making practical application impossible. The company’s proposed solution was a shower system that would impregnate the logs as they entered the plant, without altering its overall operation and making the storage method irrelevant. Naturally, this required the fungi to be semi-liquid, and for that… well, for that it would have had to be conceived that way from the start, 10 years and a billion pesos in the past.
R&D that does not consider, from its very hypothesis, the real application conditions of the technological solution it proposes has little chance of becoming part of the productive matrix and turning into innovation; and the years of effort and resources invested will only serve as material for a column warning against this kind of situation. Worse than a bad scientists’ joke.
Javier Ramírez
Executive Director, Know Hub Chile
Read the original column at https://opinion.cooperativa.cl/opinion/ciencia-y-tecnologia/de-pollos-ideales-a-fracasos-reales-el-costo-de-ignorar-la-aplicacion/2024-12-05/000342.html
