Opportunities and threats in polymer based materials science and technology

Despite the fact that materials research has completed an innovative and exciting decade from a fundamental science perspective, the fact remains that at the exploitation stage commercial returns on the R&T Investment made by large companies has been poor. In this article we look at one such company's experience; at the general challenge of maintaining a strategic research capability in the face of drastic business reorganisation and address some of the interesting challenges and threats for the polymer community (in academe and industry) over the next decade.