Applying the Technical Results and Experience from Unsuccessful Projects in New Projects: Kuraray and the Innovation of Nylon 9T

摘要

One of the big challenge of Innovation management is, how to manage the contingencies and uncertainties. Actually it is impossible to obviate any contingencies and uncertainties from an innovation processes. One of the solutions could be applying technical results and experiences from unsuccessful projects to new projects. Genestar® is a kind of "Aromatic Nylon = High heat resistance Nylon" and the start of the business was 1999. Although the demand of "High heat resistance Nylon" was being increased at that time, Dupont(= Nylon 6T, 1994), Solvay(= Nylon 6T, 1991), Mitsui Chemical(= Nylon 6T, 1989) and Mitsubishi Gas Chemical (= Nylon MXD6, 1983) had already started the business five to ten years earlier. In addition, Kuraray had not had any Engineering Plastics business at that time, i.e. Kuraray was a newcomer in both technical area and business area. Under the difficult situation, Genestar® has gotten a big success, the business has reached to 14,000 ton in 2017. This paper picks up Kuraray's Genestar® (Nylon 9T) as the example and it discusses about how Kuraray made Genestar® succeed by applying technical results and experiences from two withdrawn, terminated projects, (a) Polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) project, (b) nonan diamine project, which are based on different technical areas.