Chemistry as Innovation Driver

Because of the 50th anniversary of Angewandte Chemie International Edition, internationally renown chemists and other scientists, for example, members of the Editorial Board and the International Advisory Board, discuss topics such as research politics, the relationship of chemistry and society, and chemical education.

The inaugural issue of Volume 50 contained an Editorial by Peter Gölitz (Editor-in-Chief, above right) on the history of the International Edition as well as an Editorial by the Chairman of the Editorial Board, François Diederich, in which he gave a personal overview of the most important advances in chemistry over the past 25 years.

In Issue 4, Diane Smith, Senior Associate Editor, wrote about women in chemistry, in issue 23 Professor Gautam R. Desiraju, Bangalore, India, about Science in a Changing World.

Issue 15 presented an Editorial by Andreas Kreimeyer (above left) on “Chemistry as Innovation Driver”. Kreimeyer is a member of the Board of Executive Directors of BASF, where he is, among other things, Research Executive Director. He has been a member of the Editorial Board of Angewandte Chemie since 2008.

Chemistry as Innovation Driver

According to Kreimeyer success in the past depended to a major extent on developing, manufacturing, and selling large volumes of standard products. In the future we will deliver more and more system solutions and functional materials. This can’t be done with yesterday’s or today’s concepts. Increasing expenditures in R&D or keeping them at an adequate level is not enough. Leap-frog innovations—totally new technological and chemical concepts for problem-solving—will be necessary.

New system solutions, functional materials, and application know-how will be called for, and only an international, interdisciplinary approach to research can address complex problems efficiently and comprehensively. In the future, chemists engaged in R&D will cooperate even more with specialists from other disciplines, such as engineering, biology, and physics. Global knowledge networks will rapidly become the norm.

For Kreimeyer only a culture of innovation can unlock the potential of new technologies and build the basis on which we together can find solutions for the challenges of the 21st century.