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Broad
Horizons
in Nano Tech
Could
Virginia
be where the metal rubber meets the polymer road?
The
latest economic news has been very good from the
Commonwealth’s technology center in
Northern Virginia. After shrinking more slowly than other sectors
from 2001 to 2003, tech employment growth again is
driving job creation up (2 out of every 3 new jobs
in Virginia
are being created in Northern Virginia) and unemployment down (to 2 percent in
Northern Virginia). Economist Christine Chmura sees
technology-related wages and salaries in
Northern Virginia
rising over nine percent in 2004 and another nine
percent in 2005 to total about $5.5 billion.
The
technology-driven future for Virginia, then, appears to be bright. And since the future
is where we are going to spend most of our time
from now on, that is a good thing. But what about
sectors other than software and information
technology that anchor
Northern Virginia’s tech economy? What about other regions? Will
a new age dawn, as Don Henley sings, on fewer than
expected? And what is the public sector’s role
in all this?
First,
remember some of the differences between the old
economy and the so-called new economy, now that
the new economy is back. In the old economy, Virginia’s economic development strategy was to attract
companies from other states by selling itself as a
cheap place to do business. Low taxes, low wages
and geography were advantages for manufacturing
and transportation. Investing in a high-quality
environment -- education, health care, water
resources, etc. -- was optional, because doing so
might require taxes or regulations on businesses
that more than anything were cost-conscious.
In
the new economy, however, flexibility,
adaptability and a willingness to embrace change
began to define successful regions. Service companies and jobs exploded in places rich in ideas and talent
and companies moved into regions with amenities
and large pools of educated people. Information
and communications became drivers. Return on
investment, not the costs of inputs, drove new
investments. Governments, businesses, universities
and non-profits partnered in those regions to
build new, diverse communities.
As
Joel Kotkin of Pepperdine
University
has
observed in new economy studies for the Milken
Institute, “Wherever intelligence clusters, in
small town or big city, in any geographic
location, that is where wealth will accumulate.”
Two
summer events in Virginia
indicate that broad partnerships are evolving
quickly in the Commonwealth in two areas of
technology – nanotechnology and biotechnology
– where potential alternately is oversold and
undersold. As fast-emerging fields feeding off
research and commercial breakthroughs that occur
almost daily, nano and bio would not have been
prime candidates for success in the old economy.
Low wages and physical geography aren’t prime
factors. Smart people and trained workers are.
Further,
there was inertia in Virginia, a preference to see what future would show up,
rather than an energy to build it. Ideas and
innovations regularly slipped into the water, of
course, but too many were launched, in current
electoral parlance, as swift boats sent up river
more than anything else to draw fire. Now there
have emerged in
Virginia
new partners ready to seek strategic purpose, set
direction, divvy up roles and resources and draw Virginia’s horizons, not just observe them. This is
another good thing.
The
Virginia General Assembly led the way on
nanotechnology by approving a study (introduced by
Delegate Joe May, R-Leesburg) this summer by its
Joint Commission on Technology and Science (JCOTS)
of the “nanotechnology research and related
economic development opportunities for the
Commonwealth.” JCOTS formed a citizens advisory
panel of scientists, attorneys and business
executives to do just that and at its inaugural
meeting August 4th took its first look
at why the ability to engineer systems with
components on length scales of 1-100 nanometers
could be big business.
“Properties
and structures of materials are different at such
reduced scales,” Robert Hull, Director of the
University of Virginia’s NanoQuest Institute
told panelists, “and if we can make things
smaller, they are cheaper, lighter, use less power
to operate and we can have a lot more of them.”
For
cars and airplanes, that could mean lighter,
stronger bodies, self-repairing parts and
collision avoidance systems. For health care, that
could mean nanostructured drugs and delivery
systems, self diagnostics and bone/tissue
regeneration. For manufacturing, that could mean
self-assembling materials, super-hard cutting
tools and nanoscrubbed processes.
The
confluence of critical capabilities, including
computational, fabrication, synthesis and
measurement methods, is driving nanoscience, Hull
said, as is an improved understanding of nanoscale
biological processes. With support from the
Offices of the Secretaries of Technology and
Commerce & Trade, the Center for Innovative
Technology and the Virginia Economic Development
Partnership, JCOTS is to report back before the
General Assembly convenes again in January 2005.
At
stake is Virginia’s share of an estimated $1 trillion market by
2015 and a share of the almost one million jobs
related to nanotech in the U.S.
that may be created by then. In the shorter term,
thanks in part to leadership from Virginia’s United States Senator George Allen, there is
a share of $3.7 billion the federal government has
authorized over four years for nanotechnology
research initiatives.
With
very similar intent on July 23rd,
Governor Mark R. Warner signed Executive Order 76
to form the Governor’s Commission on
Biotechnology. The commission is to build an
implementation plan drawing from the 2003 report
of the Governor’s Advisory Board for the
Virginia Biotechnology Initiative, in the words of
the executive order, “to ensure that Virginia
will become a recognized center for biotechnology
comparable to the reputation the Commonwealth now
enjoys in other technology sectors.”
Among
the commission’s areas of investigation are how
to leverage universities, laboratories,
incubators, research parks and private investment;
assess job creation and new investment potential
of workforce, location and other factors; satisfy
future workforce and training needs; evaluate
Virginia’s competitive position; enhance the
Commonwealth’s research base; and encourage
growth of biotech companies and future investments
of life science companies. With the Secretary of
Commerce & Trade and the Chairman of the
Virginia Biotechnology Association serving as
co-chairmen and the Secretary of Technology as
vice chairman, the 30-member commission may form a
smaller executive steering committee to more
quickly develop details and options before
reporting in July 2005.
Michael
Darby and Lynne Zucker, two UCLA scholars who
spent the last decade studying the rise of new
technology industries, released a working set of
conclusions earlier this year that could offer
some guidance. Because nano, like bio, is a
science-based technology sector, they discovered
that the number of top scientists at nearby
universities and the existence of a large pool of
highly skilled workers are the two strongest
factors in attracting nanotechnology firms to a
particularly region. That discovery sets off a
strategic alarm in a Commonwealth whose
population, commercial, job and university
research centers are not congruent. Another group,
the Virginia Research and Technology Advisory
Commission, is tackling that question.
Now
what about metal rubber? NanoSonic of Blacksburg
recently announced it was making a new material
that conducts electricity like metal, but
stretches like rubber up to several hundred
percent of its original length. Artificial
muscles? Airplane wings that change shape on
electrical command? Lockheed Martin Corp. was
interested enough to sign an agreement in July.
And NanoSonic, created in 1998 in cooperation with
Virginia Tech and the Center for Innovative
Technology, says it has plenty of other
breakthroughs on the horizon.
--
August 9, 2004
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