The Driving Force

Strategic thinking matrix. (From Robert, Michel, Strategy Pure and Simple II, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1998. Reproduced with the permission of McGraw-Hill Companies) 

Quadrant C companies do a good job of strategic visioning, but can t implement well. Robert cites early personal computer clone makers as examples. Their vision was clear — to be the best clone maker — but many fell short on execution. Quadrant D is poor in both strategic visioning and execution. Of course, companies in this quadrant are in peril. 

While A is the most desirable quadrant, most companies, by the author s reckoning, are in quadrant B. In the U.S., this is due to several factors. First, 

According to Robert, tmderlying factors such as quality, customer service, and profitability are givens. Any company on the competitive field must perform well at the givens. Competitive advantage centers on managing activities associated with the driving force. Robert refers to these as areas of excellence.  

Managers in a company with ongoing projects and with options for new ones could apply Robert s framework to rank the potency of their projects. A simplified categorization might look like that shown below. 

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The driving force is generally the insolubility of one of the products in the reaction medium or the volatility of one of the products. 

Development planning and production are usually based on the expected production profile which depends strongly on the mechanism providing the driving force in the reservoir. The production profile will determine the facilities required and the number and phasing of wells to be drilled. The production profile shown in Figure 1.1 is characterised by three phases ... 

Solution gas drive occurs in a reservoir which contains no initial gas cap or underlying active aquifer to support the pressure and therefore oil is produced by the driving force due to the expansion of oil and connate water, plus any compaction drive.. The contribution to drive energy from compaction and connate water is small, so the oil compressibility initially dominates the drive energy. Because the oil compressibility itself is low, pressure drops rapidly as production takes place, until the pressure reaches the bubble point. 

For some types of wetting more than just the contact angle is involved in the basic mechanism of the action. This is true in the laying of dust and the wetting of a fabric since in these situations the liquid is required to penetrate between dust particles or between the fibers of the fabric. TTie phenomenon is related to that of capillary rise, where the driving force is the pressure difference across the curved surface of the meniscus. The relevant equation is then Eq. X-36,... 

The Washburn equation has most recently been confirmed for water and cyclohexane in glass capillaries ranging from 0.3 to 400 fim in radii [46]. The contact angle formed by a moving meniscus may differ, however, from the static one [46, 47]. Good and Lin [48] found a difference in penetration rate between an outgassed capillary and one with a vapor adsorbed film, and they propose that the driving force be modified by a film pressure term. 

It is quite clear, first of all, that since emulsions present a large interfacial area, any reduction in interfacial tension must reduce the driving force toward coalescence and should promote stability. We have here, then, a simple thermodynamic basis for the role of emulsifying agents. Harkins [17] mentions, as an example, the case of the system paraffin oil-water. With pure liquids, the inter-facial tension was 41 dyn/cm, and this was reduced to 31 dyn/cm on making the aqueous phase 0.00 IM in oleic acid, under which conditions a reasonably stable emulsion could be formed. On neutralization by 0.001 M sodium hydroxide, the interfacial tension fell to 7.2 dyn/cm, and if also made O.OOIM in sodium chloride, it became less than 0.01 dyn/cm. With olive oil in place of the paraffin oil, the final interfacial tension was 0.002 dyn/cm. These last systems emulsified spontaneously—that is, on combining the oil and water phases, no agitation was needed for emulsification to occur. 

The driving force for migration is established by the different electrochemical potentials (AU) that exist at the two interfaces of the oxide. In other words, the electrochemical potential at the outer interface is controlled by the dominant redox species present in the electrolyte (e.g. O2). 

The situation in figure C2.8.5(b) is different in that, in addition to the mechanism in figure C2.8.5(a), reduction of the redox species can occur at the counter-electrode. Thus, electron transfer tlirough the layer may not be needed, as film growth can occur with OH species present in the electrolyte involving a (field-aided) deprotonation of the film. The driving force is provided by the applied voltage, AU. 

Although the data for the silver halides suggest that silver(I) fluoride is likely to be more soluble than the other silver halides (which is in fact the case), the hydration enthalpies for the sodium halides almost exactly balance the lattice energies. What then is the driving force which makes these salts soluble, and which indeed must be responsible for the solution process where this is endothermic We have seen on p. 66 the relationship AG = — TAS and... 

Further insight into the driving forces of chemical reactions can be gained by considering major physicochemical effects at the reaction center. 

In molecular distillation, the permanent gas pressure is so low (less than 0 001 mm. of mercury) that it has very little influence upon the speed of the distillation. The distillation velocity at such low pressures is determined by the speed at which the vapour from the liquid being distilled can flow through the enclosed space connecting the still and condenser under the driving force of its own saturation pressure. If the distance from the surface of the evaporating liquid to the condenser is less than (or of the order of) the mean free path of a molecule of distillate vapour in the residual gas at the same density and pressure, most of the molecules which leave the surface will not return. The mean free path of air at various pressures is as follows —... 

The first report on the Pd(II)-promoted Cope rearrangement is the conversion of fw./ra/w-l,5-cyclodecadiene (44) into c/5-l,2-divinylcyclohexane-PdCl2 complex (45) with a stoichiometric amount of PdCl2(PhCN)2 at room temperature. The complex formation is the driving force of this unusual rearrangement [38,39]. A similar transformation of germacrane (l,5-dimethyl-8-isopropyli-dene-/rfflu,/ra j-l,5-cyclodecadiene) takes place[40j. 

Conjugation of the newly formed double bond with the carbonyl group stabilizes the a p unsaturated aldehyde provides the driving force for the dehydration and controls Its regioselectivity Dehydration can be effected by heating the aldol with acid or base Normally if the a p unsaturated aldehyde is the desired product all that is done is to carry out the base catalyzed aldol addition reaction at elevated temperature Under these conditions once the aldol addition product is formed it rapidly loses water to form the a p unsaturated aldehyde... 

Extensive intercalation of polar molecules takes place in this substance in an irreversible manner, and marked hysteresis results (Fig. 4.28). The driving force is thought to be the interaction between the polar molecules and the exchange cations present in the montmorillonitic sheets, since non-polar molecules give rise to a simple Type B hysteresis loop with no low-pressure hysteresis. 

Chapter 3, there is often a region immediately preceding the lower closure point, in which increased adsorption is brought about by reversible capillary condensation. The meniscus now tends to be somewhat ill defined owing to its small dimensions (p. 153), but the mechanism can still be thought of in Kelvin terms, where the driving force is the pressure difference across an interface. 

Before pursuing the diffusion process any further, let us examine the diffusion coefficient itself in greater detail. Specifically, we seek a relationship between D and the friction factor of the solute. In general, an increment of energy is associated with a force and an increment of distance. In the present context the driving force behind diffusion (subscript diff) is associated with an increment in the chemical potential of the solute and an increment in distance dx ... 

Presentiy, multilayer capacitors and packaging make up more than half the electronic ceramics market. For multilayer capacitors, more than 20 biUion units are manufactured a year, outnumbering by far any other electronic ceramic component. Multilayer ceramics and hybrid packages consist of alternating layers of dielectric and metal electrodes, as shown in Figures 5 and 6, respectively. The driving force for these compact configurations is miniaturization. 

Greater dimensional control and thinner tapes in multilayer ceramics are the driving forces for techniques to prepare finer particles. Metal organic decomposition and hydrothermal processing are two synthesis methods that have the potential to produce submicrometer powders having low levels of agglomeration to meet the demand for more precise tape fabrication. 

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