{"id":1931,"date":"2006-03-28T23:26:36","date_gmt":"2006-03-28T23:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2006\/03\/acs-if-i-had-a-million-dollars.html"},"modified":"2006-03-28T23:26:36","modified_gmt":"2006-03-28T23:26:36","slug":"acs_if_i_had_a_million_dollars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2006\/03\/acs_if_i_had_a_million_dollars.html","title":{"rendered":"ACS: If I had a million dollars…"},"content":{"rendered":"

There may be big money in small science, but not as much as you might think. Mike Holman from Lux Research<\/a> \u2013 a leading nanotech research and advisory firm \u2013 gave an interesting presentation this afternoon about the barriers to nanotechnology commercialization. He talked of a \u2018nanotechnology value chain\u2019 rather than a specific market, and of the discipline being a \u2018broad enabling technology\u2019 that allows for incremental improvements to existing products, rather than generating completely new ones.<\/p>\n

The total amount of nanotech funding is increasing, but it was interesting to note that whereas corporate cash is more often focused on electronics and information technology, that from the government is targetted towards healthcare and the life sciences. It seems, therefore, that the barriers to commercialization are not necessarily technological or economic ones, but also cultural and organizational \u2013 the latter two obstacles highlighted with amusing quotes about nanotechnology ‘just being a fad’.<\/p>\n

As the session continued, however, it became clear (at least to this member of the audience), that there is another problem. When the worlds<\/em> of science and business collide the words<\/em> of science and business do not. What is a \u2018dollar investment gap\u2019? I think an \u2018IP conduit\u2019 featured in a few Star Trek episodes. I understand \u2018cash flow\u2019, but what do \u2018development platform\u2019 and \u2018integration services\u2019 really mean? As for \u2018roadmapping\u2019, I checked the OED<\/span>,<\/a> so don\u2019t try and tell me it\u2019s a real word. Come to think of it though, as chemists, we\u2019re just as bad. If we start mumbling about ‘nucleophiles’ or ‘electrophiles’, non-chemists wouldn\u2019t have a clue. Worse still, polite conversations rapidly become uncomfortable should we happen to mention ‘cleavage reactions’ or ‘backside attack’!<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, nanotechnology is beginning to have a commercial impact and so it doesn\u2019t really matter if we\u2019re not all speaking the same language. After all, the money will do the talking.<\/p>\n

Stuart<\/p>\n

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There may be big money in small science, but not as much as you might think. Mike Holman from Lux Research \u2013 a leading nanotech research and advisory firm \u2013 gave an interesting presentation this afternoon about the barriers to nanotechnology commercialization. He talked of a \u2018nanotechnology value chain\u2019 rather than a specific market, and of the discipline being a \u2018broad enabling technology\u2019 that allows for incremental improvements to existing products, rather than generating completely new ones.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conference-reports","category-stuart-cantrill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}