6 Critical steps for a successful R&D to market for chemical suppliers

You R&D team has just developed an innovative material or specialty chemicals, and it’s now time to get this brand-new product out of your lab.

But how can you make sure that commercialization will be a success?

Is your product really what your target markets want? Or need?

And are these target markets the best applications for this new product?

Well, before you waste all your sales and marketing efforts into dead-end applications or market it with an incorrect positioning, here are the 6 steps we recommend you follow to maximize your chance of commercial success.

These steps are coming from our Insight Solutions — short missions where we help chemical suppliers to accelerate and secure the commercialization of their products.

1. Identify the best applications

Once you have developed a new product, you certainly have first ideas of target markets and potential applications you would like to enter.

Usually, these ideas are close or related to your current markets and applications.

But are you sure that these applications are the best for your new material? Aren’t there other applications better suited for your new product?

In most cases, you have plenty of end-uses opportunities, and you need to broaden your application reach to detect the most promising applications.

After years helping suppliers to commercialize new technologies, we have identified 3 reasons why it is difficult to identify the best applications on your own:

• Limited resources to explore new applications and collect reliable insights in a reasonable amount of time.
  
  
• Lack of market connections to reach the right people at the right companies in the right regions or applications.
  
  
• Highly fragmented markets which are even harder to detect and reach.

2. Understand your customers’ needs

Over the years, we’ve heard so many stories of great achievements in new chemical developments, which ended up with users saying: “Your technology is outstanding, but we don’t need anything similar”, or “we can’t make a switch right now”.

Well, good to know, and better before you invest in your commercialization plan.

When you identify a promising application, you need to make sure that the market conditions are in favor of your new material.

Learn what your target audience needs for specific applications. And, most importantly, determine what their challenges and pain points are.

It is particularly difficult to raise interest for a new product when the users do not have strong pains to solve, which often means that there is no real market need.

And without a market need, your commercialization has a high chance to fail, even if your material performs well.

So, before moving on the next step, you must answer this question: What are the unmet needs of your target users, and how could your product help them?

3. Understand the drivers and barriers to adopt your products

Now that you have identified a promising application with validated customer needs, why would these companies buy your product?

Because your product performs well?

I’m afraid that this is not enough.

Because your product matches the customers’ needs?

It is better, but there is a difference between “matching customers’ needs” and “persuading customers to adopt for your product”.

And no matter the industry you target, there are 3 major drivers to adopt a new material:

• Significant regulatory pressure
• Significant technical issues
• Significant cost savings

I do say “significant” because in many industries, like automotive to name one, the pain of the problem must be greater than the pain of going through costly and lengthy approval procedures.

Therefore, you need to know the real motivation of your future customers, and their potential barriers to adopt your new product.

4. Understand your competition and generate comparative data

Let’s assume that your target is ready to buy a new product. But will they buy it from you?

You have developed a great solution to their problem, but your competitors have also done this too. Unfortunately, you are rarely alone in the market space anymore.

You need to know the existing and upcoming alternatives and provide comparative data to help your future customers realize if your product is the best solution for their need.

And believe me, nothing works better than a detailed technical data package showing how your product outperforms alternative materials, parameter per parameter, and number per number!

Once you have generated a substantial performance and comparative data set, you are ready for the real-life check.

5. Find learning partners to test your product and share feedback

How does your technology actually behave in the end-users processes and formulations?

Prior to your product launch, you need to ensure that your product delivers on its promise, and truly performs in real-life conditions. This is why learning partners are a critical component to your product validation process.

And no, your customers are not the best candidates to test your innovation.

In general, I hear: “We have customers, and we have no idea why they use our materials”.

In our Insight Solutions, we always identify learning partners, meaning the right companies willing to test your technology in real conditions, then validate that your product meets the expectations in each identified application.

Testing several types of formulations will help you understand how versatile your product is, what is the exact fit, if it has limitations that you will have to consider and/or improve, or even prove your product’s differentiation.

Here are my best practices to get the most out of your pre-launch trials:

• Follow-up closely with the users testing your material
• Confirm technical success
• Collect data on benefits
• Build success case studies that tell a problem-solving story
• Fine-tune your value proposition
• Differentiate your product from the alternatives

6. Understand your value proposition

As you have certainly realized by now, going through steps 1 to 5 helps you understand what applications you should target, and what makes your product unique and valuable.

Your value proposition is the highlight statement which makes your potential customers understand why they should buy your product. And it is not only about performance:

• It’s about your technology: its technical behavior, price, and brand equity
  
  
• It’s about your company too: your services in terms of technical support, or logistics
  
  
• It’s about your environment: the competition, regulatory constraints, and market trends
  
  
• It’s valid for a buyer persona, defined by a given application, region, type of company and more.
  
  
• And don’t forget, your value proposition evolves over time as you continually gather outside-in data

So, make sure to keep it updated. And state it clearly within your organization to align product management, sales, marketing and even R&D all along the product life cycle.

Now, you are fully prepared for a successful commercialization.

And if you are looking for learning partners within 3 to 4 months, check out our Insight Solutions.