On Friday I had a meeting with two guys from BSi – also known as British Standards. They had run across the work of Materials UK in the arena of materials resource efficiency through this blog and were interested in our ideas on the Materials Property Validation Centre.

Standards are an important, and often forgotten weapon in the drive for innovation. Everett Rogers work on the Diffusion of Innovations, first published in 1963, divides those who take up innovation into several classes. Innovators themselves do not need much encouragement and comprise only a few percent of the population. The next group, and this is where Rogers introduced us all to the concept of “early adopters”, need only to be made aware of the existence of innovations to want to own or use them. They make up about 1/8 of the population. Next come the “early majority”. These are very influenced by standards and seek to take advantage of innovations when they think they are accepted by a broad cross-section of the population. They make up about 1/3 of the population. The next group, the “late majority” need the power of regulations and laws to drive them to look at new ways of doing things, but they do eventually succumb. Finally, the “laggards” are usually driven out of business by the regulations because they cannot adapt.

BSi had also identified the need for better standards in the area of materials specification – to add a validated measure of the environmental impact of a material, both before it is selected for a specific application and once it is selected, used and eventually needs to be disposed of or recycled. The meeting reached agreement on a path forward rapidly and we are now into the planning of the delivery!! Watch this space and keep your own standards up!! ☺

David