Endings and new beginnings
After a bit more than three years, it is time for us to say goodbye as Executive Editors of the Journal of Business Chemistry. We look back on many successful issues and are very grateful for the support of all authors and reviewers for this and previous issues. We would now like to hand over to Andrea Kanzler who will be Executive Editor beginning from the next issue, and we could not be more confident that the Journal of Business Chemistry will continue to flourish.
The first article “Building bridges in education: Exploring how engineering and MBA students can work together to help the environment using biodiesel” by Yassir Samra, James Patrick Abulencia, Emilia Golebiowska Purington, and Giovanni Kelly, is an example of interdisciplinary collaboration between chemical engineering and business students at Manhatten College. The article describes how the students learned about interdisciplinary teamwork and sustainable innovation by converting waste vegetable oil into biodiesel and conducting a feasibility analysis.
In his commentary “Intercultural leadership – A need for now and the future in chemical industry. A personal observation based on experience.”, Bernd Scharbert shares his experiences as an international manager of a large chemical company. He begins by taking the reader through various stages of his career and emphasizes that intercultural leadership skills are crucial for efficient and harmonious global teams. He then describes global leadership challenges and outlines key lessons learned. Finally, he summarizes three success factors for improving the performance of a global team: Cultural Wisdom, Ambiguity Tolerance, and Language Sensitivity.
In their book review, Stephan Haubold and Mathias Seifert take a closer look at “Chemistry Entrepreneurship“ by Javier García-Martínez and Kunhao Li published in 2022. Chapter by chapter, they give an overview of the content, and it quickly becomes clear that this is less an academic textbook than a practical guide. Furthermore, it becomes clear that the concept of chemical entrepreneurship is defined in a rather broad manner and includes neighboring natural science. A clear strength of the book are the numerous case studies, which encourage and inspire the reader. Overall, the authors recommend the book, for natural scientists, engineers, and early technology entrepreneurs in general.
Please enjoy reading the third issue of the twentieth volume of the Journal of Business Chemistry. If you have any comments or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact us at contact@businesschemistry.org. For more updates and insights on management issues in the chemical industry, follow us on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/jobc/ and subscribe to our newsletter.