American Chemical Society meeting

On October 11th I attended the Minnesota Local Section meeting of the American Chemical Society at Normandale College. The speaker was Dr. Sumita Mitra speaking about "The Essential Habits of Effective Innovators". I promised her I wouldn't put the list online, so everyone should get her to come and speak with you. She worked for 3M for 35 years, and has since formed a consulting business. I very much enjoyed her talk, even if I was less able to put a lot of it into practice right now. Much of my work wasn't synthetic, so there are some differences of focus as well. The link to the description still works . I felt that many of her points involved approaching research in a slightly more systematic way, with the idea that effective means getting what you wanted. So she seemed not to encourage the "happy accident" mode of discovery. I would suspect this is important in larger corporate settings like 3M, where meeting targets is important and can't wait for a happy accident. I very much embrace a lot of her organization ideas. Unfortunately, this will have to be a short overview, to make sure I'm not stepping on any toes. I always love attending these meetings and hearing what other people have done with chemistry.