Apr 7 2010
Dr. Scott Rickert, President and CEO of Nanofilm, was recently the featured interview on the science and nanotechnology blog Evolving Innovations. Blog editor Vincent Caprio, who is also the vice President of the national NanoBusiness Alliance and the founder and Executive Director of the New York NanoBusiness Alliance, interviewed Dr. Rickert about his views of nanotechnology in the coming decade.
Dr. Rickert, who describes the next ten years as The Nano Decade," characterizes the nanotechnology industry as "the software of the 21st century," a tech industry that "you can't see, smell, or really touch." Nanotechnology is similar to software which was "something used in small quantities that had a big impact on the improvement of existing products and the development of new products."
In Dr. Rickert's view, nanotechnology will follow a similar path of growth and eventual consolidation that shaped the software industry in the 1980s, with the few resulting merged entities focused on serving all major markets.
In the interview, Dr. Rickert also discusses the role in nanotechnology for established global players, start-ups, academia and research. He puts particular focus on the role of investors in the Nano Decade, saying, "I also predict that investors will finally appreciate nanotech materials and inventions as components of this new 'software' industry that drives so many other industries, and they'll apply the appropriate growth and ROI metrics."
The complete interview can be read at Evolving Innovations.