Market Watch: In 2006, Nano is Not Just “Small” – It’s Multi-Functional: Insights from One Commercialization Firm’s Playbook
In 2006, the most sought-after nano-research IP will not just be small – it will be able to deliver multi-function technologies that manufacturers can use to build a variety of products. That’s the insight from execs at Advance Nanotech, a nano commercialization firm that specializes in taking nano research from lab to marketplace.
Nano World News spoke with Advance Nanotech’s senior vice president Dr. Peter Gammel to learn where and why the right types of nano research will be in hot demand. Gammel takes his cue from talking daily with leaders in both worlds – nano researchers and Fortune 1,000 manufacturers, giving him and his firm a uniquely well-informed view of nano’s coming trends.
Top Nano Sectors Remain the Same – But with an Important Multi-Use Twist
Gammel told NWN he sees top industrial demand for nano IP will remain in today’s top three nano IP sectors -- biopharma, electronics and materials.
But, in 2006, he adds that demand for nano IP could begin a huge uptrend – based on two new factors: They are (1) An increasing willingness by manufacturers to outsource their IP innovation; and (2) The ability of nano researchers to map their IP innovations to manufacturers’ new-borne need – for BOTH immediate and long-term IP capabilities.
Gammel sums up the dynamic situation this way: “Many see the near-term needs as being smaller, faster, and cheaper. But, what you are really going to want is multi-functional [technologies],” Gammel told NWN. The hottest nano IP will be those that can “spread [benefits] across all three sectors.”
Gammel deftly explained to NWN how the changes in the manufacturers’ marketplace and business models are creating new openings for the right kind of nano IP.
“In manufacturing today, especially in the Fortune 500 firms, there is an enormous trend to outsource technological innovation,” Gammel said. And that creates a powerful opportunity for nano IP that can meet manufacturers’ near-term needs to support lower-cost products – and provide capabilities that manufacturers can use later to form the basis of new products.
Connecting the Nano Dots Between
Expanding Opportunities and Nano IP Projects
For all the expanding opportunities in nano-commercialization, it can be difficult for nano researchers to get their arms around it.
“For nano [researchers], plugging themselves into the needs of manufacturers, both immediate and long-term, can be difficult,” Gammel said. “Advance Nanotech was created to be a guide for [nano researchers], and also to fill that void that manufacturers face when they want to de-risk themselves from investing in innovations.”
Gammel adds that much of nano’s ability to play a larger part in industrial America is being held back by a simple lack of visibility between the IP research community and the established manufacturing community. “This is our sweet spot at Advance Nanotech, to bring research from the innovation stage through to proof of concept or proof of manufacturability.”
Does Your Nano Research Have the Right IP Stuff?
How does Advance Nanotech connect-the-dots? “Through some funding, but more importantly, we know how to apply the organizational structures [to IP research] that can speed IP development into commercialization,” Gammel said. Those structures include: program management, IP proof-of-concept development, program oversight, and then making the connections with manufacturers.
We asked Gammel how he would suggest nano researchers self-evaluate whether their nano IP project has the right stuff to get interest from industry.
Gammel said his research and discussions with manufacturers tells him the next wave of hot nano IP will be those cross-sectional nano technologies – Advance Nanotech calls them “in-between” technologies.
To give NWN readers an insight into whether their nano IP projects meet the ‘in between” test, Gammel took us through Advance Nanotech’s work in one nano IP sector: Device-Level Sensors.
Gammel said that device-level sensors are “a great example” of where all three nano sectors – bio, chem and materials – converge to bring more than the sum of their parts.
For example, the firm is working with Owlstone Nanotech to help speed testing and commercialization of Owlstone’s nano-based research on a chemical detection system with Kidde, a unit of United Technologies. Owlstone is developing miniaturized chemical detection sensors that can quickly and accurately identify trace elements of toxins, contaminants and chemical agents.
Further, Advance Nanotech has teamed up with the University of Cambridge (UK) to launch a sensor-focused Bio-Micro Arrays using Thin Film Transistors (BiMAT) program aimed at creating bio-sensors that could be used to detect early stage infections or disease – disorders ranging from Avian Flu to diabetes and cancer. Further, BiMAT technologies would require only small samples of blood or other bio-materials – even breath.
Gammel explains Advance Nanotech’s multi-disciplinary view toward nano-sensors this way: “You hear a lot about sensors for homeland security, but there we think there is also an enormous play for using sensors to help with indoor air quality and monitoring volatile organics, and they also could be used for industrial process control in the chemical arena, and even in the medical sector to do monitoring for diabetes by looking for acetone on the breath,” Dr. Gammel said. “This kind of nano technology can even take the concept of smoke detectors to the next generation of [micro-particle] detection.”
Beyond sensors, Advance Nanotech is working with nano researchers and manufactures in the fields of displays, advanced opto-electronics, and energy storage and conversion.
And through it all, Dr. Gammel said Advance Nanotech brings milestones and development approaches that help keep nano researchers focused on the important endgame: successful commercialization. “We are a public company. We have to make money. And, we don’t get paid unless we are working with companies with powerful technologies and can identify end users. So, we are all about milestones and process that leads to results.”
