I stumbled upon an article recently talking about Clark Foam, the world's leading manufacturer of "blanks,"foam cores for surfboards. Having any industry leading business to suddenly go out like that, is never good, but it opens up possibilities for others to take the place and become the world leader. LeRoy Whinney, a chemist for Sandia National Laboratories knew of a replacement material that could be adapted to make the foam blanks, TufFoam. However, the material is unusual in that it is used for protecting sensitive electronics in bombs. Nonetheless, the lab has created a series of samples that have been found to be comparable to the best boards and seems to outperform compression and crack-resistance tests as opposed to other alternatives. Executives of the lab which is run by Lockheed Martin, says the revenue would be used to fund other research.
It is interesting to know there are always alternatives to a problem. In this case, it really benefited the new company that will be supplying the new material to make surfboards. As in all business aspects, it is important to stay aware of you surroundings especially the market place. The particular chemist was able to look beyond his own industry of designing products for the Defense Department, and use his skill to apply it to something entirely different, surfboards. There are many opportunities out there and is also important to be able to adapt and change in order to capture these opportunities, especially as managers.
Article and Picture from Wired. Picture by Ilan Rubin.
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