How many lost opportunities have there been from research projects that seem to have gone wrong, and were subsequently thrown out? Countless. Not so for Swedish chemist Saeid Esmaeilzadeh, who came to Sweden over twenty years ago as an eight year old with his family fleeing from Iran. Esmaeilzadeh’s work is focused on developing new types of glass and ceramics. During this work he accidentally discovered a new kind of ceramic, one that has strength superior to steel, when he inadvertently cooled ceramics he was working with too quickly. It would normally be thought that this compromised the ceramics, and they would be discarded. But Esmaeilzadeh decided to look more closely at his mistake, and in the process he discovered he had created a “Super Glass”. He has started a company to work with Super Glass, called Diamorph, and they are hard at work looking at various commercial applications for this material.
More support for the value in failing forward, taking risks, and looking at accidents. That is where innovation happens. Clearly, you can miss these opportunities if you’re not curious enough to look more closely.
I came across Super Glass at Core77.
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