The Nano Front Burner

I came across this passage in the latest issue of the Forbes/Wolfe Nano Report and thought it was bang on.
(steve)

"Two general trends in nanoscale electronics development emerged from the more detailed scientific presentations. The first is the belief that future achievements will focus on the hybridization of dissimilar technologies, such as the integration of solar cells and fuel cells in portable electronic devices. The second focused on how interdisciplinary advancements in the fields of bio and nano-technology will drive future product innovation. In other words, nano-electronics, nano-biotech and nano-energy were "front" burner sectors where the advancements would be realized soon."

"Nanotech Fever Grips Japan" (page 3)

Forbes/Wolfe Nano Report

March 2005

Charge!

This recent nanotech-related announcement from Toshiba makes the Energizer bunny look like a turtle!

(steve)

Toshiba Corporation today announced a breakthrough in lithium-ion batteries that makes long recharge times a thing of the past. The company's new battery can recharge 80% of a battery's energy capacity in only one minute, approximately 60 times faster than the typical lithium-ion batteries in wide use today, and combines this fast recharge time with performance-boosting improvements in energy density.

The new battery fuses Toshiba's latest advances in nano-material technology for the electric devices sector with cumulative know-how in manufacturing lithium-ion battery cells. A breakthrough technology applied to the negative electrode uses new nano-particles to prevent organic liquid electrolytes from reducing during battery recharging. The nano-particles quickly absorb and store vast amount of lithium ions, without causing any deterioration in the electrode.

The excellent recharging characteristics of new battery are not its only performance advantages. The battery has a long life cycle, losing only 1% of capacity after 1,000 cycles of discharging and recharging, and can operate at very low temperatures. At minus 40 degrees centigrade, the battery can discharge 80% of its capacity, against 100% in an ambient temperature of 25 degree centigrade.

Toshiba will bring the new rechargeable battery to commercial products in 2006. Initial applications will be in the automotive and industrial sectors, where the slim, small-sized battery will deliver large amounts of energy while requiring only a minute to recharge. For example, the battery's advantages in size, weight and safety highly suit it for a role as an alternative power source for hybrid electric vehicles.

Toward Biological Computers

I wrote about biological-based computers in my book, Quantum Investing. Seems like researchers at Technion have made some remarkable advances recently.

"Technion scientists have developed a biological computer, composed entirely of DNA molecules and enzymes constructed on a gold-coated chip. This new computer represents a significant improvement over the original computer reported three years ago in a joint paper by Prof. Ehud Keinan of the Technion and a group from the Weizmann Institute of Science, which included Yaakov Benenson, Prof. Ehud Shapiro and Prof. Zvi Livneh. The Technion researchers succeeded in increasing the level of complexity of their computer. Whereas the original computer could accept up to 765 different programs, the new computer can accept as many as 1 billion programs. This increase represents a dramatic advance in terms of the potential mathematical operations and complexity of problems that may be solved using a biological computer. The results are published this week in the Journal of the American Chemical Society."

I have little doubt that the Microsofts and Intels of the future will have biological roots in their technologies. Those that don't simply won't be around for very long.

Printing in the 21st Century

Speaking of self-replication...

"A self-replicating 3D printer that spawns new, improved versions of
itself is in development at the University of Bath in the UK. The 'self
replicating rapid prototyper' or RepRap could vastly reduce the cost of
3Dprinters, paving the way for a future where broken objects and spare
parts are simply 're-printed' at home. New and unique objects could also
be created. 3D printing - also known as 'rapid prototyping' - transforms a
blueprint on a computer into a real object by building up a succession
of layers. The material is bonded by either fusing it with a laser or by
using alternating layers of glue.”

Sounds like science fiction doesn’t it? Then again, we are in the 21st
Century folks!

Me and My Ric 

Meet the New Ma Bell

Folks that work with me regularly know that I'm a huge fan of a revolutionary communications company called Skype. For years, I've been telling anybody that would listen that the communications industry would experience a gale of creative destruction as the Internet and World Wide Web evolved.

While it may seem that the communications industry already has been disrupted by new technologies, in reality the wave of creative destruction has just begun. Skype is one of the companies that has potential to relegate many of incumbent operators to the telecom graveyard.

The Luxembourg-based startup has so far signed up 29 million registered users for its free Net phone calling software--a unique version of voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP--making it one of the fastest-growing services on the Net. Now the company aims to generate profits by offering paid services that promise to make its Net-only product significantly more useful to consumers--and potentially more lethal to traditional phone providers.

Last week, Skype quietly unveiled test versions of two new paid products--voice mail and a service dubbed SkypeIn that lets subscribers obtain ordinary telephone numbers. SkypeIn represents a potential watershed, since it will enable Skype subscribers for the first time to receive incoming calls from the hundreds of millions of people who still use traditional phone services. Additionally, Skype is working with equipment makers to develop hardware that will connect conventional phones to its free software and paid services. German giant Siemens, for one, has already released a Skype adapter for cordless phones in Europe. New devices are expected soon in the United States, from companies including Vtech and iMate, that will let people make Skype calls using an ordinary handset, rather than a PC.

Needless to say, Skype's efforts to bridge the Internet and the traditional phone network could pose a major headache for traditional phone companies and other VoIP upstarts alike in the months ahead.

Beyond Price Competition

Many security analysts on Wall Street are fond of focusing on price competition when analyzing companies and industries. While it is useful to think about prices, Schumpeter believed that the competition that really matters in not price competition among a large number of firms producing a homogeneous product. Rather, it is:

"the competition form the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization -- competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives."

The nanotechnology revolution will usher in an entirely new way of manufacturing products -- one that will envolve creating new products molecule by molecule using self assembly techniques that have never existed before. Schumpeter's thoughts on the kind of competition that drives the capitalist process should be kept in mind as the nanotechnology revolution accelerates.

Welcome

In my book, Quantum Investing, I noted that as the pace of technological innovation continues to accelerate, there would be an enormous amount of what economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction in the global economy. The nanotechnology revolution is still in an early stage of evolution, but I believe it has the potential to bring about a gale of creative destruction during the next decade and beyond. Other quantum-based technologies will also play an important role in altering the business landscape. This mission of my blog is to shed light on how technological inventions and innovations are affecting the creative destruction process and to anticipate and illuminate key shifts in the business landscape.