Synthetic consumer diamonds is an interesting space, one that was actually explored by GE in the mid-late 90s. This article gave me flashbacks of "Straight from the Gut" by Jack Welch [1]... any chance you worked with that particular division? Even if not, it would be interesting to hear your story.

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=2GrqeGCE544C&pg=PT142&dq=I...