Peaks after 3.5 years

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“The economic development of nanotechnology. An indicator based analysis”
The article can be downloaded from
http://cordis.europa.en/nanotechnology

Very important subjects derivated from the report and very interesting to investors:

- The document shows previsions for nanotech global markets of 1,000 billion USD at 2015 (figures one and two, pag. 10). Within a pessimistic scenario, the previsions are of 150 billion USD for the same year (Mitsubishi Institute, 2002). Moreover, in an optimistic scenario the previsions are of 2.6 trillion dollars at 2014 (Lux Research, 2004).
- Any case, from 2008 to 2015 you have to multiply the current market for a factor of 4. In seven years, it will have grown two for two times. In other words, year after year rhythm of growth is approximately, applying the well-known rule of 70: (70/3.5)=20%.
- You can get double market every three and half year. This sounds right. We suppose you agree with us. However, the most interesting figure of those you will be able to find it at page 22. You will observe two peaks at Fig. 15 on the patents of nanotech according to EPO (European Patents Office). Two peaks at year 1999 and at 2002. Perhaps we will be able to find a new peak every three years. Perhaps have we the same rhythm of growing for both, market and patents?
- The classification in families of developing nanotech that EPO has developed as very useful (page. 22):
o Nanobiotech
o Nanoelectronics
o Nanomaterials
o Nanodevices
o Nano-optics
o Nanomagnetics
- If you consider figures at page 23 (fig. 16) where you can observe the two most important periods and the relative growth between them: 1995-1999 and 1999-2003. Nano-optics and nano-biotech are the most enthusiastic families.
- If you believe in the accumulative character of scientific and technical knowledge and the accurate accumulation for growth happens every three and half years.
- In addition, if you consider fig. 8 where you can find peaks at the same years for VC investment and the EPO activity.
- Thus, we think that the better opportunities to invest in nanotech by 2008 and 2009 you will find at Nano-materials and Nano-electronics. You must consider that every 3.5 years, the market is double than precedent.

How

Smarter

Today we will try to know how much a robot can produce per year if we want that he generates profit for us.

Well, we have to read careafully some main figures about robots in the world.

"International Robot Exhibition. Tokyo, December 2007"

ABB Speech. Anders Jonsson. Executive vicepresident Head of Robotic Division.http://www.irex2007.jp/ENG/pdf/ABB_e.pdf Global Robotics Division.

Year: . . . . . . . . . . . R+D Expenses (b$): EBIT(b$) =====================================
2004. . . . . . . . . . . .. . 971. . . . .. . . . . . . . 450

2005. . . . . . . . . . . . . 966 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800

2006. . . . . . . . . . . 1.066. . . . . . . . . . . . 1.100

6,000 researchers and developers worldwide. Sales in robotics products 1st Qt to 3rd Qt 2007: 1,2 b$

We will asume that researching personal cost is included in R+D expenses.

4,500 employees in over 50 countries. 150,000 robots installed worldwide.

Well, we can see...

(3.0b$ R+D expenses in three years + 4,500 employees * 75,000 $/year·employed*3 year, including all costs)=4,0125 b$

4,0125 b$ / 150.000 robots=26,750 $ per robot installed.

Customize and maintaining in 8 years, as 15% of acquisition price per year,...

(26,750*0.15)*8+26,750=aprox. 58,900 $ per robot total cost in 8 years. Its annual cost must be at least as he can produce to us (marginal cost). Thus...

58,900/ 8 = 7,362.5$ per year.

We think it is not expensive, in global average, to improve our industrial trends with robots. So Koji Toshima from Yaslawa Electric Corporation said in his speech "future robots that co-exist and co-prosper with humans". http://www.irex2007.jp/ENG/pdf/ABB_e.pdf

Please, do not forget to visit the link of our media center to International Robot Exhibition. Thanks.

How far away from the bottom?

Smaller

Well, perhaps you remember our post about Feynman’s memorable speech at Caltech, December, 29 – 1959 called: “There is plenty of room at the bottom” For all of us, it was the beginning of Nano-Tech.
Absolutely Mr. Feynman was right, one more time. Yes, it seems as if Ph. D. Richard Feynman stays saying to students, entrepreneurs, investors and to everybody at the entrance of his classroom “Yes, come in, there is plenty of room at the bottom, please, come in and don’t stop on researching and, of course, in investing too”.

Nevertheless, it is a practical blog. We want to show main figures and easy rules. All oriented to people that need to take decisions about investment and they need to know the exact dimensions and the future scenarios. Well, let's go!

From the memorable speech mentioned above
“Let us represent a dot by a small spot of one metal, the next dash, by an adjacent spot of another metal, and so on. Suppose, to be conservative, that a bit of information is going to require a little cube of atoms 5 times, 5 times, 5 times, that is 125 atoms.”

Well, in this paragraph the author considered 1 bit equivalent to 125 atoms.
HD-DVD versus Blue-Ray technologies and other comparatives.

Below, we will express how far away these technologies from the theory limits established by Mr. Feynman lie.

We have considered a CD-format, in other words, a disc of 5.7 cm of diameter, and with a circular sector between 2.1 and 3.5 cm. (It is easy to probe that, you can measure it)
The result of this dimensions is 8.82 exp(-3) square meters. Value [A]

We have considered too a typical atom as an sphere of 1 • exp(-10)m of radius, approximately double of Bohr’s radius. Thus, the volume of one atom will be 4.18 exp(-30) cubic meters. Value [B]

Well, now please read carefully this table:

================================================

Technology: CD-ROM
Capacity (Gbytes):0.7
Wavelength laser source (nm): 780
Length Hole surface (micrometers): 0.8
Track-wide (micrometers):1.6
Atoms per format: 1,69Exp(+22)
Atoms-per-bit: 3,01 Exp (+12)
================================================

Technology: DVD
Capacity (Gbytes):4.7
Wavelength laser source (nm): 650
Length Hole surface (micrometers): 0.74
Track-wide (micrometers):1.6
Atoms per format: 8,44Exp(+21)
Atoms-per-bit: 2,24 Exp (+11)

================================================

Technology: HD-DVD
Capacity (Gbytes):15
Wavelength laser source (nm): 405
Length Hole surface (micrometers): 0.2
Track-wide (micrometers):0.4
Atoms per format: 4,22Exp(+21)
Atoms-per-bit: 3,52Exp (+10)
================================================

Technology: Blue Ray
Capacity (Gbytes):25
Wavelength laser source (nm): 405
Length Hole surface (micrometers): 0.15
Track-wide (micrometers):0.32
Atoms per format: 3,17Exp(+21)
Atoms-per-bit: 1,58Exp (+10)
================================================

Wow, are you surprised? We are so!

We are very, very far away from the limit established by Mr. Feynman of 125 atoms per bit. Blue Ray, the great Blue Ray, the Once, still needs 15,800,000,000 atoms per bit!!!

The most important aspect that concerns to new recording and recovering information optical technologies is the wavelength of the laser reader device. We need to research to reduce it, and we will be able to reduce the track wide recording and the Length hole of monocape.

In any case, there is plenty of room at the bottom. The investment community had to think that the recording technologies and their impact in business (better media distribution, recording format cheaper and faster) have a clear opportunity of business. If you think in investments to improve the optical systems and laser sources in order to reduce the wavelength…perhaps any nanometers only…it could be great. Sure.

Today: Stronger and the new executive trained in green energy

From the editors:

We think that next years we will able to see great transformations. We must answer to the new challenges if we want to improve our world. Today investors have to know how physical numbers (watts, nanometers, terabytes, efficience in photons energy, etc.) can be translated into money terms. Their purpose and sometimes their customers need transform the first into the second.

And of course, it is not clear. Indeed it is our mission in this blog: helping people who need harness investment opportunities at early stage in lead sector with high return and growing markets and benefits and perhaps there are not much time to decide.Because sometimes, it is necessary a scientific basis to learn what the numbers want to say. This is our engagement. This century perhaps would be known in the futre as the "3-S century". Our vision establishes a new world characterized as

• Stronger: with new, clean, sustainable and efficient energy sources
• Smaller: developing new technologies and knowledges at nanoscale world, providing us new circuits, bio-tech developments, etc
• Smarter: if we were able to perform technologies to work with all information and comunication and interact with the human being: expert systems, artificial intelligence, robotics, searching engines, and so on.

We will focuse our articles in these three topics. We think nobody has too much time to test another sectors. This three items are the key sectors today and the key to a reliable investment. Furthermore, our dream is that ireneus become a meeting point beetwen investors and researchers.Thank you very much for all and we start, we have not too much time, you know...

How to train the new executive class in renewable energy industry

Stronger

From The Economist 2008 May, 3rd-9th

"2008 May, 1st is the dead line for applications for a very special first executive-educational programme. This consists in three months course about "renewable energy". Set up by some Venture Capital firms, the course will qualify to the entrepreuners of successful starts-up (a prerrequiste for this) in the new discipline focused on manage sustainable, green and ecologycal criteria in industries such as healthcare, new energies, IT and so on .

The programme will be held in New England between June to August. 'A lack of talent we have identified in the clean-tech industry' (Peter Rothstein said, of Flagship Ventures, a programme founders. Plesase, visit www.flagshipventures.com ) That bottleneck worries investors, who have been poring cash into everything from solar energy to hybrid electric cars: last year global investment in renewable-energy business alone rose by 60% to $148,4 billion, according to New Energy Finance (NEF), a research firm based in London (please, visit http://www.newenergyfinance.com/NEF/HTML/whitepapers/2008.06.03.League.Table.2007.pdf
to download full NEF Report).

Recent global survey conducted by NEF and Heindrinck & Struggles (please, visit http://www.heidrick.com/) , a Head Hunter company, says that studied 75 senior executives, over 90% cited top-level recruitment had renewable energy as a serious concern.

But what should to offer a good programme about renewable energy to managers?

Well, we have to remark three main aspects:

1- Renewable-energy's bosses need that scientist leave the obscurity of theri Labs.
2-The executives today need project-financing techniques.
3-And of course, they also need to be able to deal with regulatory and fiscal regimes.

The prize for all executive talented in renewable and green industry knowledge, it will be clear too:
'In the sector, last years wages have soared as the industry has grown. So, they need head hunters to catch the talent and attract big utilities and private-equity funds'
(Ann Cormack, head of D1-BP Fuel Crops).

New Ireneus: Today Robots, Business and more.

From the editors:

We think that next years we will able to see great transformations. We must answer to the new challenges if we want to improve our world. Today investors have to know how physical numbers (watts, nanometers, terabytes, efficience in photons energy, etc.) can be translated into money terms. Their purpose and sometimes their customers need transform the first into the second. And of course, it is not clear.
Indeed it is our mission in this blog: helping people who need harness investment opportunities at early stage in lead sector with high return and growing markets and benefits and perhaps there are not much time to decide.Because sometimes, it is necessary a scientific basis to learn what the numbers want to say. This is our engagement.
This century perhaps would be known in the futre as the "3-S century". Our vision establishes a new world characterized as

• Stronger: with new, clean, sustainable and efficient energy sources
• Smaller: developing new technologies and knowledges at nanoscale world, providing us new circuits, bio-tech developments, etc
• Smarter: if we were able to perform technologies to work with all information and comunication and interact with the human being: expert systems, artificial intelligence, robotics, searching engines, and so on.

We will focuse our articles in these three topics. We think nobody has too much time to test another sectors. This three items are the key sectors today and the key to a reliable investment. Furthermore, our dream is that ireneus become a meeting point beetwen investors and researchers.Thank you very much for all and we start, we have not too much time, you know...

Robots and Business

Smarter

First:

John P. Desmond after Robobusiness 2008 Conference & Expo Event, expressed his opinion about VCs and Robotics because he thinks that connections are Few: "The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), for example, decided years ago that robotics would no longer be a category in its funding reports".
John P. Desmond is a contributing Editor to Robotics Trends. He can be reached at john_desmond@king-content.com

While another important executives in VC think that "The investment opportunities are few and far between. I've spent a lot of time looking for robotics investment opportunities. The military-funded companies are slow to develop and we are in the fast-to-develop business" (Stan Reiss of Matrix Partners, Waltham, Mass.- based VC company)

However, you can find out new start-up and enterprises that do not prefer be seen as robotic companies instead advanced researching centers: artificial vision or human language, sensor and advanced devices and so on, necessary to supply the robotic industry.

This enterprises can Return the investments more quickly than exclusively robotic companies, because the market for robots performing is too young and weak. Only military centers are now focused at 100% in this.

You can see www.robobusiness.com

Second:

By now we can talk about figures showed by european and japanese executives in the last 2007 International Robot Exhibition. Managers from ABB and Toyota Researching and other more talked about number of robots currently enabled today in the industry (1 Million), what is the investment in R&D in their industries last years (Nearly 1 Billion $ each last three years with 6.000 researchers. [ABB figures]) , how much money and persons
(1 PERSON working in the manufacturing robot industry by 30 ROBOTS made and installed after all. 150.000 robots installed around the world. [Figures from ABB]) are necessary to improve and comercialize a robot in the market an so on.

In this way you can get a gauge the figures of this industry today.

http://www.irex2007.jp/ENG/Simultaneous.html

Third:

Save the Date for RoboBusiness 2009!April 15-16, 2009 Hynes Convention Center Boston, Massachusetts Event information will be available in the coming months and registration will open in July. Be sure to sign up for our bulletin to receive event notifications.