High-Tech Trends Have GLOBAL Effect

Area Development Site and Facility Planning, Oct/Nov 2007 by Avery, Susan

Almost every state has at least one biotech-related initiative, including state-funded stem cell programs in Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York (although on a smaller scale than California's). A growing number of states are also now investing in alternative energy and nanotechnology development, usually through university-state partnerships. A report earlier this year from the National Governors Association and the Pew Center on the States - entitled "Investing in Innovation" - notes that although state investments in R&D are dwarfed by total R&D spending by industry and the federal government, these kinds of well-planned initiatives can make a dramatic difference in future high-tech developments.

In Texas, the state's two-year-old Emerging Technology Fund, in addition to offering incentives to attract high-profile researchers to universities, also provides matching grants to hightech startup companies in order to help expedite commercialization of new products. This initiative "has had a beneficial effect throughout the state," says Poage. "There are now a whole bunch more companies that are commercializing products than were there a year ago. It has also helped to level the playing field somewhat because areas that previously had almost no technology coming out now have tech companies starting up."

Nationwide, high-tech venture capital investments increased 2 percent in 2006 to $12.7 billion, with software services the largest sector at $5 billion, according to AeA.

Nanotech

The hottest emerging technology by far right now is nanotechnology, which isn't actually an industry but rather a multidisciplinary specialization that overlaps many industries, including most if not all of the 49 North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) codes that AeA uses to define "high tech," plus many others not included in AeA's list. Nanomaterials (such as nanospheres, nanofibers, and nanotubes) are already being used in a growing number of consumer products as well as industrial applications. Development and initial commercialization of nanotools, which allow measurement and manipulation of matter at the nanoscale (one billionth of a meter), and nanodevices, which perform specific functions at the nanoscale, are already well under way.

A recent study by Lux Research, a New York-based market research and consulting firm specializing in nanotechnology and the physical sciences, found that U.S. corporations directly employed about 5,300 "white-coat" nanotech developers at the end of 2006, predicting that this number will grow to 30,000 in the next two years. In addition, the National Science Foundation (NSF) forecasts that nanotech will indirectly affect at least two million bluecollar jobs within a decade.

Lux Research also found that $12.4 billion was invested in nanotech R&D worldwide in 2006, and more than $50 billion worth of nano-enabled products were sold. The U.S., Japan, Germany, and South Korea were the leaders in nanotech, but China, India, and Russia are beginning to close the gap.