Let me explain. I am currently in the final stages of writing a book that aims both to explain to R&D departments how to turn their nanotech-related ideas into sales revenues and to reveal to business executives how to find competitive advantages by using nanotechnology. It is a distillation of my experience over the past few years analyzing nano-enabled markets and holding discussions with nano-engineers and "C-level" executives in nano-oriented firms. There are lots of challenges in writing such a book. For example, how do I talk about the kookier nano-level effects to deal-hardened MBAs, while also discussing business strategizing in a way that will catch the interest of engineering and physics PhDs? But what is really a challenge is trying to decide why anyone should write such a book at all.
You might expect that a writer would ask himself a question as fundamental as this before he sets out to write a book. When I signed my contract with the publisher, I understood that nanotechnology was more of an "enabling technology", and not an industry in the sense that the automobile industry is an industry. I thought of the nanotechnology sector as something to be defined in almost sociological terms. There were, I perceived, a growing number of nanotechnology conferences, periodicals and so on. My book should be about topics that the attendees at these conferences and the readers of these periodicals were interested in. Whatever those were.
But it was only when I sat down to write - with the book's deadline serving in lieu of a hanging and "concentrating my mind wonderfully" - that I realized that this "enabling technology" mantra, which one hears in nanotech circles a lot, wasn't really all that helpful. And neither was my "sociological" approach to the issue. Neither went much way at all to explaining the unifying theme that makes nanotechnology a single subject, however interdisciplinary that subject may be.
There had to be a good reason why a single book should cover the market opportunities that flow from such profoundly different innovations as a new kind of gel that helps nerve cells grow, catalysts that make a gallon of fuel take a car further, and new forms of computer memory chips. As I thought about it, it slowly dawned on me that the reason for writing the book ultimately boiled down to two words - tools and trends. The two "Ts" as it were.
Nanotech tools
As I wrote the initial sections of the book - you know, the ones that talk about what nanotechnology actually is - I found that I was primarily discussing the tools of nanotechnology. That is, techniques such as extreme ultraviolet lithography, e-beam technology, dip-pen lithography, nano-imprint lithography and atomic layer deposition. Most of these approaches have their origins in the semiconductor industry but are being used increasingly for other kinds of nanoscale construction - dip-pen lithography is being applied to put encrypted IDs on drugs to prevent forgery, for example.
As I pressed on with the book, I began to draw the conclusion that nano-enabled products were essentially those built with a toolbox made up of gadgets that enabled things to be manipulated at the nanoscale. The "gadgets" are the techniques that I listed above. A corollary to this is that one reason why nanotechnology is assuming so much importance today is that there are a lot more such gadgets around and they work a lot better than they used to do. Although most of them don't yet seem well suited for high volume manufacturing.
At one level this explains why those nanotech show attendees are turning up. They are looking for things that they can do with these tools in lots of sectors. (Many of the booths at nanotech shows are tools firms.) It's almost as if a new kind of hammer had been invented and lots of folks from lots of places with widely disparate interests are wondering how they can deploy this new hammer in their own sectors.
The trends
But this is really only one side of the picture - the "T" that stands for tools. The other "T" - for "trends" - is what makes nanotech so exciting. It seems to be the case that the emerging tools for nanotechnology not only enable us to engineer features smaller than 100 nm, but that the need to do so is strongly in tune with three of the biggest societal and economic trends of today. Put simply, there is good evidence that there is real demand for this stuff.
One "megatrend" that is hard to ignore is the aging of the baby boomers. There were a lot of us in that generation and our whims, whines and opinions have always been highly influential. But it's not just that. We have always expected more than previous generations and as we get older and sicker, we will expect more from our doctors. Nanotech just might meet some of those expectations with improved regenerative medicine, drug discovery and drug delivery.
Another megatrend is the growing mobility of computing and communications. Firms such as IBM, Intel and Motorola are all pushing a futuristic vision, variously called invisible computing, pervasive computing or ubiquitous computing, in which always-on mobile devices combine advanced computing and communications functionality. Nanotech can help make this vision a reality with better displays, packaging, nanosensor networks and, especially, new power sources.
Finally, there's the energy issue. While I was writing this, my favourite online news service was telling me that oil was at $67 per barrel. Need I say more? Nanotechnology promises improvements that will make better use of existing hydrocarbon fuels, as well as ways of lowering the cost of alternative energy sources, notably photovoltaics. And one day, carbon nanotube cables and nano-enabled supercapacitors may transform electricity transport and storage.
I feel a certain queasiness in writing the previous paragraph because it sounds much too much like the copy that spews from the keyboards of the hucksters and nano-boosters who are all too common in the nanotech community at the present time. I only mean to point out that the new capabilities of the nano toolkit and the needs of some big trends seem to be in alignment. This is a very good thing for the future of "nanobusiness". But there will be lots of difficulties in making this alignment happen. Indeed, there is a considerable cynicism at the present time with regard to the real impact that nanotech will have. My own research has shown that this is especially true in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries.
To steer between despair and hope, nanobusiness will also need to "concentrate its (collective) mind wonderfully".