http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3062 examining transformative technology Fri, 03 May 2013 19:22:42 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3062#comment-853461 Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:46:34 +0000 http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3062#comment-853461 Heh, it works about the same amount that anything in a scientific paper does. "We got some results that look promising, but our funding ran out, and no we're not going to commercialize this." 10 years passes. Someone else discovers it. Nothing happens with it for another 10 years. Someone references the paper in passing. A tinkerer has a go at it and determines that it's completely impractical, but doesn't publish anything. Another tinkerer tries it out and decides it's the best thing since sliced bread, there's a media hoopla. He get VC funding. Hires engineers. They tell him it won't work. They go out of business. 3 years later someone suggests starting a company based on this technology, but the VC isn't forthcoming. A few years after that someone figures out a way to do it with half decent scale, and publishes. A dozen tinkerers scramble to found startups. The research organization spins off a startup. There's a whole lot of competition. In an effort to be first to market the whole concept gets downgraded to a more practical technology. The other startups fail because they didn't get to market first. The first startup fails because it wasn't revolutionary enough. There's another 10 year hiatus while a handful of the engineers who were in these startups get jobs at research labs of corporate giants (typically in Japan). They eventually find each other and start work on a serious effort. A practical system is developed and the announcement is met with cynicism and boredom by the media who happily report that the technology has been tried and died in the startup incubator. Meanwhile the technology quietly becomes a standard part of the medical instruments manufacturing line and no-one ever hears about it again. Heh, it works about the same amount that anything in a scientific paper does. “We got some results that look promising, but our funding ran out, and no we’re not going to commercialize this.” 10 years passes. Someone else discovers it. Nothing happens with it for another 10 years. Someone references the paper in passing. A tinkerer has a go at it and determines that it’s completely impractical, but doesn’t publish anything. Another tinkerer tries it out and decides it’s the best thing since sliced bread, there’s a media hoopla. He get VC funding. Hires engineers. They tell him it won’t work. They go out of business. 3 years later someone suggests starting a company based on this technology, but the VC isn’t forthcoming. A few years after that someone figures out a way to do it with half decent scale, and publishes. A dozen tinkerers scramble to found startups. The research organization spins off a startup. There’s a whole lot of competition. In an effort to be first to market the whole concept gets downgraded to a more practical technology. The other startups fail because they didn’t get to market first. The first startup fails because it wasn’t revolutionary enough. There’s another 10 year hiatus while a handful of the engineers who were in these startups get jobs at research labs of corporate giants (typically in Japan). They eventually find each other and start work on a serious effort. A practical system is developed and the announcement is met with cynicism and boredom by the media who happily report that the technology has been tried and died in the startup incubator. Meanwhile the technology quietly becomes a standard part of the medical instruments manufacturing line and no-one ever hears about it again.

]]> http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3062#comment-853447 Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:01:01 +0000 http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3062#comment-853447 Hm, does this work? Hm, does this work?

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