Crossing the Valley of Death - A Workshop on Commercializing Nanotechnology
For industries seeking to keep up with breakthroughs in nanoscience, this may be the Age of Too Much Information. Searching scientific databases for the keywords nanotechnology and nanoparticles, Vantage Point software pulled up 24,000 results, according to Dave Schoeneck of Georgia Tech and Search Technologies at the MRSEC-Nano Science Workshop at the Penn Stater, July 12, 2005. Publications in the rapidly growing field are doubling every 2-3 years, he said. Despite the amount of federal research money pouring in (nearly $4 billion allocated from 2003-2007), nanoscience is taking much longer to reach commercialization than expected.
This is the so-called "Valley of Death" says the workshop facilitator Angus Kingon, a professor in the Department of Material Science and Engineering Department of Business Management at North Carolina State University and director of the Center for Innovative Management Studies. The Valley of Death is where innovative ideas and research go to die before they have the chance to arrive in the marketplace. The workshop, a first-time experiment sponsored by the Penn State Materials Research Institute (MRI) and funded by the National Science Foundation, was created to help academic researchers become aware of the commercial implications of their research from the earliest stages, and to help industry "conceptualize viable new products," in a field with which they are not familiar.
Industry is looking for a breakthrough technology, Kingon said. One that solves a pressing problem or has a large enough customer demand to justify the enormous investments it takes to bring a product to market. An example of one such breakthrough technology that could generate a billion dollar market is a simple glucose detector along the lines of current blood-oxygen monitors.
Only one good idea out of thousands will become a breakthrough product. "They are not obvious," he said. "Much of the time, the only way to cross the Valley of Death is with a champion." A champion, he said, is someone who sees that the idea is both new and needed, and who pushes the research along to the intermediate stage where industry is willing to launch a product.
"In general, as scientists, we are comfortable describing our research. However, in order to enable applications, we have to concentrate on the unique new capabilities that our science enables," Kingon wrote in a description of the methodology of the workshop. "The trick is to define those rich product areas in a pre-competitive environment without compromising confidential information or intellectual property." No easy task, it appears.
Case Studies in Nanoscience
To give participants a real world example, which would be used for brainstorming product ideas later in the workshop, Paul Weiss, professor of chemistry at Penn State, gave a detailed presentation on current work at the University in nanofabrication and chemical patterning. In particular, he described the work his various groups have performed in molecular rulers and ultrathin film with special properties for binding molecules. "Penn State is currently one of the world leaders in self-assembly of nanoparticles and in ways of looking at what we've made," according to Weiss.
After the presentation and comments from the industry representatives (see below), the participants broke into two groups to develop product ideas based on Prof. Weiss's presentation. One group tossed around ideas for materials to repel water, controlled microstructures for better optical and electronic qualities in low-end solar cells and plastic display devices, Pac-man type enzymes on coatings to eat bacteria, and molecular rulers to make lines for improved lithography. The second group, with a different facilitator, chose a more process-oriented approach, taking a single idea much further along the path to market. Both approaches seem to have stimulated thinking toward solutions to real world problems.
"Putting many heads together was an effective way to generate new ideas," Prof. Tom Mallouk, director of Penn State's Center for Nanoscale Science (CNS), said the next day. "Once we have an idea for an application, it helps us focus the research on the simplest proof-of-concept experiment that will demonstrate the idea. That's good for both the science and the applications." He added, "I think it is worth repeating this exercise for other areas of research within our Center, and perhaps within MRI in general."
Gary Taylor, a chemist with the MRI/CNS, felt that interesting nuggets of information were contributed by the venture capitalist and the industry representatives attending, both during the workshop and in informal networking. "I believe that many of us had already been thinking in ways analogous to those that were being taught in the workshop. The result was to sharpen awareness and techniques to facilitate product development at the right time in the technology cycle."
Professor Carlo Pantano, director of the MRI, felt that the workshop was successful in revealing specific technical and philosophical issues in the "nanoscale" Valley of Death and in opening up an effective dialog about it with industry. "I'd like to see this tried on a local level on a different subject," Pantano said at the workshop's conclusion.
Comments from Industry
There is a huge gap getting from the lab to the assembly line, said Chris Murray of IBM, one of the industry reps attending the workshop. "We want to be able to add nano to already existing processes. But we need bulletproof processes. There is good stuff going nowhere because university startups are not usually looking to the final process."
Other industry reps said that areas worth pursuing included a variety of nano innovations such as a diagnostic tool miniaturized to the size of a computer chip ("lab on a chip"), nanoparticles that could be dispersed in a polymer, materials for high density optical data storage, new materials for ultrathin flat panel displays, new nano composites, and "a better understanding of how properties differ from the physical to the nano level." Also targeted were the interface between bio and microelectronics.
A business professor/scientist/venture capitalist, commenting on the idea of the champion mentioned in the opening remarks, said that venture capital was capable of being the champion in taking "good stuff" from the lab to production, but that it was important to have intellectual property nailed down.
Summing Up: A Nano Future
The promise of nanotechnology is immense, offering the prospect for a better understanding of nature and life; environmental benefits for energy, our water supply, and agriculture; the likelihood of extending life and improving health; plus a host of new products that could in the next 10-15 years have a value of $1 trillion a year. In order to bring these products to the marketplace in our lifetime, new methods need to be developed to transfer knowledge from the university to industry. This NSF-funded university/industry experimental workshop, according to several participants, was a useful first step in that process.
The workshop was run under the auspices of an NSF project: "National Partnership for Managing Upstream Innovation: The Case of Nanoscience and Technology" awarded to North Carolina State University in partnership with Penn State's Center for Nanoscale Science, an NSF-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center.
By Walt Mills, Validate to view contact info, 814-865-0285
