Overview

The building and construction industry encompasses everything from the fundamental elements of buildings, homes, and infrastructure like highways and power plants to the actual construction of the same. The materials, design, architecture, project management, as well as the physical labor and the machines, processes and myriad regulations and codes that make this all possible are far more complex than most would realize. From ensuring that the design looks right, functions and is resilient to how easy or complex is it to build and maintain, to simply ensuring that it does not fall, the skill sets required are near infinite and the collaboration required across disciplines are daunting. Finally, the rise of the digital and connectivity needs places ever changing demands on the ability to control and monitor structures for safety, efficiency, maintenance and convenience.

Key Trends

Of late, skilled labor shortages are a global crisis – the single, number one overwhelming need in the building and construction business. A massive percentage of labor who left during the recession simply never returned. Companies are constantly struggling to find workers at all levels to adequately staff their projects. Offsite, modular or prefabricated construction continues gaining ground and offers the benefits of reduced development time, less waste and often significant cost savings. The crippling recession and labor shortage have also spurred many firms to be far more cautious about the amount of new work they can handle, fearing over staffing and commitment. Commercial construction has been a leader in green and clean materials and structure adoption, but the residential sector is still catching up. A growing desire to produce environmentally friendly structures while meeting consumer demand for the same with higher-quality results and lifecycle cost savings drives this trend. Finally, lifestyle changes are seeing walkable communities, where one can walk to everything needed, from restaurants to shopping to doctors and schools. At the same time, consumers’ time constraints are driving the need for more lifetime services included such as yard maintenance and security.

Our Impact

Elemence’s role has spanned developing new materials and construction methods through enabling the DIY consumer to accomplish more and more sophisticated work in ever-simpler ways at lower costs. From the award-winning Nexabond adhesives, building cabinetry in 48 hours versus eight weeks, both the industrial and consumer benefits from our assembly technologies. The green movement benefits from our solvent and heat free chemistries and assembly technologies are simultaneously providing for ever safer and more environmentally compatible yet resilient materials.

Overview

From product components and assemblies of all kinds supporting, industrial products cover many applications where user experience, assembly methods, materials, cost, effectiveness and efficiency dominate.  From the materials of construction to the human centered design for use, repair and result, this industry space finds itself in an ever evolving, often complex supply chain.  The automotive industry exemplifies this supply chain complexity, where tier one through four manufacturers endlessly coordinate not simply manufacturing but multi-year, global product design, conception, prototyping and commercialization programs.  From required digital collaboration to how a key need by the user influences the exact metal required for a single component, this overall complexity only grows by the day.  Accordingly, one can find making confident, informed, capably assessed and effective decisions overwhelming and frustrating.

Key Trends

Simplified, low energy and higher speed manufacturing are common themes.  Sustainability, clean and green plays an ever increasing role, but not at the expense of overall cost, safety, effectiveness and efficiency.  From household durable goods to consumer electronic components to packaging and assembly machines, these trends exemplify an ever increasing competitive landscape where resource and time constrictions are only accelerating in their pressure.  Novel assembly technologies, from new welding techniques, adhesives and coatings to high speed, servo actuated erection and assembly machines and robots are alleviating these pressures.  Digital collaboration software can simplify complex work, bringing disparate global resources together into a single space for moments in time as required to achieve objectives and deadlines quickly.  Finally constantly evolving new materials, often far more sustainable, clean and green are only improving design, assembly and functionality.

Our Impact

Combining highly varied disciplines, from the digital to the manufacturing to the materials and design, Elemence and its team have consistently and collaboratively with our clients delivered superior results.  We’ve often achieved this at high speeds and lower costs than usually imagined.  Deep practical knowledge and experience drive these results.  Our staff are not only former CEO’s and senior functional executives but the same are also current practitioners, up to date on most of the newest materials, technologies, capabilities and trends or in contact with the experts who are.  Many client cases involving key industrial component changes saw tens of millions saved and results in only a week or so where production was stopped, including in furniture and cabinet assembly, musical instrument production and a key automotive component.

Overview

Moving ourselves and our valued goods and services around the globe facilitates, enables our global economy.  From the horse to the wheel, from sails to steam, from rail to cars, trucks and now air and space, our ability to move about the planet efficiently, quickly, pleasurably and conveniently keys profitable logistics both personally and commercially.  How we build our transport, how we facilitate it by our highways, rail and ports, how we direct it via automation or manual guidance and also power it keep changing at an accelerating pace.   Making solid, informed decisions requires multidisciplinary context, knowledge, understanding and then insight.   It’s one thing to make bold pronouncements about megatrends not yet realized and another to see the required what must be trues and then the realities and thus realistic insights into what the real trends truly are.  Only then can one capably and effectively develop confident insights on perceived needs and then act upon realistic conceived, analyzed and ranked opportunities.

Key Trends

Alternative, green and clean fuels dominate here, but not just to by some save the planet, but in the end to achieve improved efficiencies, resilience and reduced resource volatility leading to lower costs.  Ever improving battery technologies and powering speeds and networks such as those Tesla is driving forward lead here.  Still even improved gas mileage via hybrids and other technologies are playing a big role.  Material science is also playing a huge role in building more fuel efficient, safer and lower energy, faster to build vehicles.   From ever improving electric vehicles to potential autonomous transportation to simply safer vehicles, vastly improving digital capabilities also key transportation’s future operations.  How we utilize transportation, eying revolutionaries like Uber or simply shared vehicles to digitally finding a parking space transforms how we live every day.

Our Impact

Elemence possesses a practical, deeply experienced and connected team throughout not simply transportation but all of its supporting industries and the pure science behind those industries enable a product focused, specific commercial application capability not often seen.  Most vehicles of all types contain products our team has developed, sold, serviced and employed – sales that soar into the high hundreds of millions globally.  We retain a deep network of multidisciplinary experts whose accomplishments include founded firm Sirrus whose novel polymer technologies can not only cut automotive coating operation costs by 75% or more while eliminating solvents, but also lightweight vehicles by as much as 15% via newly enabled, inexpensive composites.   We eagerly look forward to the exciting transportation revolution and our role in collaboratively helping enable it.

Overview

Our lives, our planet – indeed our futures – depend upon chemicals.  Everything that exists today is a chemical combination of some sort.  Today’s vast, ever changing chemical industry spans fuels to pharmaceuticals to plastic to coatings and adhesives to advanced composites.  The industry’s complex supply chain derives from chemistry itself and how raw materials from many different sources can be combined or cracked into new chemicals over and over supplying the world with many of the materials powering, constructing and protecting our world.  Understanding the chemical industry and how this complex supply and relationship web impacts your own firm’s key strategic and tactical decision making in ways not often appreciated or recognized.  One’s future and the impact of chemicals requires combining market knowledge with a deep understanding of chemistry to identify and develop new opportunities effectively.

Key Trends

Green and clean dominate here but so do infrastructure and product resilience.  New medical, power and digital capabilities also depend greatly upon new chemical developments.   While the world depends upon oil and gas for most chemistry today, alternatives to fossil fuels could help protect the planet, alleviate price and availability volatility and provide improved efficiencies and overall sustainability and supply resilience.   While many attempts at green and clean chemistry have been made, few have been profitable and then highly adopted and scaled.  Resilient polymers key building and home, thermal and environmental protection as well as persistently running power, electronics and machinery.  From computational chemistry to wild Amazonian plants, novel medicinal chemistries are extending and saving lives at ever accelerating rates while also providing key breakthrough in personal care and even beauty.  Finally, nanomaterials, quantum chemistry and novel polymers are driving Moore’s law’s extension into the next decade and beyond.

Our Impact

Uniquely, Elemence possesses a deep, current and practical chemistry knowledge coupled with deep analytical, financial and strategic and tactical marketing experience.   The result provides unparalleled strategic and tactical opportunity analysis, assessment, development and commercialization that delivers real products for real customers at enhanced profitability collaboratively and at high speeds.   Our team has and continues to live, work and breath this industry on a daily basis with billions of dollars in commercialized, globally beneficial products sold by the world’s leading companies.  

Overview

Almost everything we buy, store and transport is packaged.  From a simple paper bag to multi-layer films for perishable foods, drugs and electronics to the water bottle, a highly complex set of materials, machines and assembly techniques are usually required to protect products.  Some require a certain packing geometry to be easily placed or removed, others need physical protection from transportation and handling damage while others require environmental protection to stay cold, warm and everything in between.  Many would even consider packaging to be a “protection business”, where clothing, especially for say a fireman’s safety, involves carefully packaging a human who still needs to perform a job.  Other would see protecting a house this way.  The bottom line – packaging is a very large, distinct, complex and valuable business where new challenges emerge constantly.

Key Trends

While recycling, sustainability and being green are critical trends for protecting our earth while maintaining functionality, other trends seemingly dominate packaging.  For food and beverage, it’s not just about protecting food, but also about enhancing its appeal to buyers both in the store and on storage at home.  By example, eliminating frozen food ice crystals has never been achieved and harms shelf life and packaging options, especially regarding closure options and appeal.  For food, beverage and drugs, tamper evident packaging began with the 1980s Tylenol scare but has been exacerbated recently by potential biological agents, intentionally or naturally placed.  E-Coli infections seem to be announced daily.  Packaging that can not only indicate infection but in fact stop or eliminate it is highly sought after.  Of course, the oldest trends are always the most sought after – increasing speed and lower costs.  From packaging machine reliability to closing boxes, sealing pouches or filling bags faster, many new product innovations depend upon that increased speed and lower cost to be viable.  Finally, packaging ourselves and our homes and buildings to be safer, last longer and be more comfortable has become a hundred billion dollar business in and of itself.  Surprisingly, the same technologies for food are finding their way into your clothes and our buildings ever more frequently.

Our Impact

The Elemence team possesses knowledge and practical experience in both packaging materials and the machinery required to assemble, erect, fill and seal packaging across many industries.  In fact, many global food company’s packaging machinery has been designed, built and serviced by members of our team or the firms that they led.  New adhesive, coating, material and automation technologies developed and commercialized by the Elemence team not only has enabled new products for our clients but has also uniquely improved their profitability and market positions. From refrigerated, ready to bake holiday cookies to your favorite cereals to some of the leading fashion brand’s materials, we are in your home or business somewhere!

Overview

Breakneck change permeates the technology industry.  From robotics and industrial automation to semiconductors, the internet of things, ambient awareness, network computing and software services. The technology sector is not for the weak of heart. In an industry where the innovate-or-die mantra rings loud and clear, many companies have changed little in how they approach the innovation process. Clearly there are some great, recent examples of large-scale radical change, such as GPS, the world wide web, digital cameras, or the iPhone and apps ecosystem. On the other hand, major platform innovations only come along every 7-10 years or more.

Key Trends

The more relevant innovation focus in the technology sector, or any sector for that matter, should be on more slowly moving, market shifting changes that most companies are blind to. How many times have we heard a dominant player describe a new innovation as niche, it can not scale, it’s really for smaller applications?  How many times have we heard “our customers could never use something like that, or it’s not up to our standards or requirements”?

Now, think about these comments and how they relate to 3D printing’s potential disruption. Would you have ever thought that GE would make 3D printed parts for jet engines? Guess again. GE is using 3D printing and other advanced manufacturing tools to make parts and products that once were even impossible to produce at all. GE now views advanced manufacturing and 3D printing as the the industrial revolution’s next big chapter.

Next, think about medicine and consumer products. The ability to print pills for medication or even human tissue and organs.  Imagine printing your own spare parts or jewelry or keys and on and on. Now think about entire products.  What if, instead of buying a physical product, you could simply download the instructions and immediately print the product on your 3D printer at home, office or other remote location?   The technology industry enables it all.

3D printing is merely one example of market shifting technology innovations that will slowly, but ultimately, create massive new opportunities and lay waste to many more who are too slow to adapt. Companies and their cultures will find many reasons to not to take these types of innovations seriously and spend more time defending their positions and rationale than embracing ideas of how they could take advantage of these new opportunities. This lack of foresight in scanning, assessing the market, and responding is a much bigger risk to dominant corporations. As Arie de Gues put it, “The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.”

Our Impact

At Elemence, we understand that many companies fail when faced with technology changes in their environment.  Our team possesses deep experience, knowledge and relationships in the technology space.  Combine this with our deep materials, manufacturing and design capabilities, from molecules to machines to the user experience and a unique capability emerges for an Elemence collaboration.  We work with our clients and partners to intimately understand their business, the competitive landscape, and assess current and emerging technologies, market trends, and practical adjacencies. We then work together to not only create relevant strategic foresight but to proactively address the potential risks and opportunities through our adaptive innovation program and fast-track development of practical breakthrough innovations.

Overview

Climate change or not, today’s disaster costs pale in comparison to decades past. Before the Internet, phone, or even electricity, it was rare to see a nation or a state shut down from a natural disaster. Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy changed that. While far stronger, and more deadly storms have hit in the past, the economic and societal damage of Sandy makes it the second-costliest storm in US history. In fact, Sandy was not even classified as a hurricane yet by hitting an area utterly unprepared for almost any storm. It clearly demonstrates how much work we all have to do.

Why the massive damage increase? In simple terms, what used to be simple has become far more complex and ever more difficult to maintain, let alone repair after a disaster, attack or power outage. What used to be a simple building for shelter and conducting private commerce is now undergoing complex construction, with digital controls,  elaborate entertainment and connectivity, security and production equipment.  What used to take days of labor and materials, now often requires months to years, leaving many communities, companies, and industries at great risk.  Worse still, terrorists and other criminal elements are attacking the fundamental computing and communications systems that transcend all these elements.

Key Trends

From increased technology security threats to earthquake proof structures and rapid construction and infrastructure repair techniques enabled by new materials, the needs are accelerating for a return to normalcy as rapidly as possible for the lowest costs.  Digital monitoring of buildings,  homes, and infrastructure services linked to emergency responders is also increasing rapidly.  The development of transportable water, power generation, mobile hospitals and the associated health care services are also growing.   Novel and rapid construction techniques, from modular building components to entire homes are being adopted ever more quickly, allowing some homes and buildings to be enclosed and functioning with 24 to 48 hours.   These enhanced responsive technologies are forcing the development of new materials, overall designs and assembly methods usually reserved for automobiles and consumer electronics.

Our Impact

The Elemence team actively participates in developing new building materials, construction systems, techniques and even the digital software systems and services serving the increased need for resilience.  From materials that can withstand the most powerful elements and fabricated or applied in seconds to minutes,  to design techniques that see buildings erected in a few hours, we’ve playing a key role in helping make the world a safer, more resilient place.

Overview

Increasingly, companies are creating new revenue and business models to find ways of growing their businesses, develop a more sustainable competitive position within existing markets, and create or grow market share in entirely new markets. A number firms have been very successful at creating and adapting to these new models, while most languish at extending their vision and, more importantly, execution in changing the value stream.  In fact, some of the best examples of business model innovation, come from new market entrants and startups that seize on the competitive opportunity to disintermediate dominant players or create highly differentiated services in legacy markets. These new market entrants are also not bound by the same business and supply structures that impede rapid and adaptive innovation to compete in today’s global markets.

So, how do we deliver value to our customers in new ways that not only sustains growth but possibly the life of the business itself?

Key Trends

Business model innovation is not merely a new way of creating “novel” products and processes.  Many make the mistake of attempting to retrofit competitive advantage through predictable and incremental features and service changes that are easily copied and rarely sustain a real competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Some of the best examples of business model innovation are certainly familiar to us, such as Apple’s iPod and iPhone products integrated with iTunes and the Apps Marketplace services. Or Google’s ad-sponsored business model that ultimately underwrites or cross-subsidizes many other services that people have to pay for elsewhere. There many other examples where business model innovation is completely changing the value stream.

If you think that these, and other models just do not apply to your business, you’re already behind. If you believe that business model innovation should be used defensively to protect an aging product, service or declining business against competitive threats, you’re not quite there yet. The best examples of business model innovation are insightful, and customer focused at their core. They are also highly disruptive to an existing marketplace, and still some create entirely new marketplaces that supplant older ones.

Our Impact

Our approach at Elemence is to understand your current business capabilities, customers, problems and market dynamics to help better define the challenges you are trying to solve. Next, we work to deeply understand the unarticulated needs of current and potential customers and markets. Using our business model innovation design methodology we not only work with you to uncover new ideas and business opportunities but also to quantify potential solutions according to their market potential. Many times the degree of difficulty in organizational, economic or execution exceeds a company’s ability to launch these new initiatives effectively. It is also not uncommon for the new business model to require a different ecosystem of suppliers, partners, employees and methods of distribution. Elemence can be of greatest help in providing the resources necessary to carry out these new business initiatives and move quickly and more efficiently to market development, trial, and launch.

Overview

Saving the planet should not be the only reason for finally using and developing sustainable resources.  Looking at it that way, common sense, cost and realism can seemingly go by the wayside.  In the end, simple common sense tells to use materials that indeed are as renewable or recyclable as possible due to the obvious cost and supply stability advantages.  Materials that do not harm the planet even under those circumstances also seems like common sense – otherwise the cleanup and societal costs will inevitably come back and hit us all square in the face.   Accordingly, honestly evaluating our energy, material, food and health needs and how they are met drives doing business well, leading healthy lives and living within our planetary limitations.  A key here is being truly honest, educated and informed.  By example, as it turns out, plastics are often better than paper when capably handled, as they use far fewer deleterious, environmentally damaging chemicals.  Yet we still toss plastic bags out like popcorn.  That means behavior could change, not necessarily the materials.

Key Trends

While slowly emerging, most bio-based materials are still a pipe dream and solar and wind power is not so low cost as we hoped so far.  In fact, now many countries are abandoning the subsidy train as high costs only punish the poorest among us.  The push to make energy truly cost effective will continue but the drive to ever improve electronic and hybrid vehicles is a train that has left the station and gains momentum daily.  The development of green chemistry based upon waste and radically increased recycling will trump the bio-based movement for sometime. Still, bacterial and plant based chemistries can use an apparently over abundant resource – CO2 – to make almost anything.  Those chemistries are being pursued and will have their day.  Sustainable agriculture is feeding an ever growing global population.  The truly biggest trend?  Simply recycling what we have already used – from water to metals to plastics to glass to our electronics, we already have a wealth of materials right before our eyes and the recycling industry is one of the fastest growing globally.

Our Impact

One our most passionate spaces, making the world’s economy and society ever more sustainable drives us every day.  From developing and commercializing some of the most exciting, efficient and green chemistries ever seen to helping understand and grow the recycling industry to providing clean water to grow, wash and play, the Elemence team works hard with our clients to make a brighter world.  Again, the key is honesty, education and context – what seems like the simple answer is not often the right one.

Overview

The drive to improve speeds in almost everything, from assembling products and packaging, to loading them on truck to cleaning a building or our homes has created the automation industry.  While automation can eliminate jobs, it usually increases quality, reliability, effectiveness and safety.  Starting with Ford’s simple production line to the emergence of automated manufacturing using servos and robotics coupled to advanced control systems and the designs that afford their use, the automation industry grows ever larger and with ever more impact every year.  The digital age has brought ever more powerful computing and along with it ever better controllers, adaptive learning machines and software as well the ability for individuals through touch computing and collaboration software to manage and run not just a single operation, but an entire production line or natural resource plant.

Key Trends

The robotics revolution advances relentlessly along with the software and machines that enable it. Nowadays, robots driven by software and vision systems can be programmed to perform a variety of tasks, which fits with today’s demand for flexible manufacturing. Combine this with the robot’s ability to work collaboratively and safely with humans and other robots, and this trend will continue its growth. By the details, major trends also include multi-touch screens, where users demand increased speed, power and flexibility in their plant floor operator interface applications.   Even mobile apps are appearing to support plant and line operation from a distance at any remote location, whether by a human or not.  The assembly and materials technologies that support automation are also accelerating, as the machines start to move faster than the chemistry and the connectors.  Today’s newest product, machine and robot designs are actually driving the materials and design industries to adapt ever faster to insure every new automation opportunity is fully realized.

Our Impact

Many on the Elemence team have spent their entire careers in automation, robotics and machine design, operation and management. In fact, the odds are high that most major food manufacturers are using some automated machinery designed and implemented by our staff.  The advanced adhesive, coating and polymerization technologies we have developed and commercialized are catalyzing big transformations in consumer electronics, automotive assembly and building products automation through their rapid cures – often in seconds – without the need for heat or solvents.  

Overview

Materials – the things that everything in our universe are made up of – goes beyond chemistry and into either one’s intentional or natures own designs, structures and combinations to achieve certain features delivering ever increasing benefits.  From metals to ceramics to chemicals to glasses to polymers and their combination, the materials lens dominates every other industry to their core.  Software depends upon ever shrinking, ever faster hardware whose capabilities are completely determined by not simply materials but how, when and where they connect, can be assembled and operationally and functionally managed.  Medical materials for diagnostics through to drug delivery and artificial organs and limbs depend completely upon these complex combinations.  Today’s 3D printing and the drive to improve capabilities, speeds, functionality and cost are completely material science driven.  The concepts of resilience in infrastructure, construction, digital systems, machinery and transportation see the same.   Understanding the myriad orchestral combinations, structure and deployments depend not simply upon science but upon translating that science into the interactions and effects upon the products, the customers, the marketing, the financials and economics and even the ethics of all of that on our planet’s and society’s futures.

Key Trends

Green and clean dominate as do material and structure resilience and feature specific performance in an ever more susceptible world.  By example, the basic concept of structures protecting and sheltering people have not changed in thousands of years, but the last 30 years has seen an exponential explosion in system and infrastructure complexity entering, within and supporting these shelters.   From digital to environmental controls to storm and environmental resistance to entertainment, the materials required to maintain the expected standards of improved living without interruption are seeing accelerating performance requirements.  All of the latter without increased costs, with increased assurance and confidences and in fact lower and lower prices.  Resource restrictions and limitations are also major trends with an ever increasing emphasis on sustainability, clean and green without as noted increased costs or prices.

Our Impact

Over thirty years for most partner’s experience within complex materials, their structures and combinations within machines, buildings and infrastructure have given Elemence an ability to perform at high levels here.   As noted in many other areas, it’s precisely the current, practical experience down to to individual products and their component assemblies and the materials and their structures that enable our teams to collaboratively deliver results quickly and with realism.  With deep specific experience from automotive and transportation to packaging to machinery to chemicals and metals and so on, we not only bring in specific relevant experience but the cross disciplinary perspectives to that bring new ideas to the table.