Report availabe from Symposium on Assessing the Economic Impact of Nanotechnology

(Nanowerk News) The OECD and the United States National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) held an international symposium entitled Assessing the Economic Impact of Nanotechnology in March 2012. Hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington DC, it brought together invited participants from the public and private sectors with expertise all along the nanotechnology value chain – scientists, engineers, policy analysts, private investors, technology leaders, and the general public – from both OECD and emerging economies.
The final symposium report is now available for download (pdf).
The objective of the symposium was to “systematically explore the need for and development of a methodology to assess the economic impact of nanotechnology across whole economies, factoring in many sectors and types of impact, including new and replacement products and materials, markets for raw materials, intermediate and final goods, and employment and other economic impacts”.
It was organised around expert talks and discussions on issues, such as the role of research funding portfolios; intellectual property frameworks; private-sector and industry investments; patents and publications; venture capital; public-private partnerships; state and local initiatives; international co-operation; and development metrics for nanotechnology. In addition to plenary talks, sector-specific breakout sessions were organised in transport and aerospace, nanomedicine, electronics, energy, materials, and food and food packaging.
Four background reports were developed for the symposium:
  • Challenges for Governments in Evaluating Return on Investment from Nanotechnology and its Broader Economic Impact (pdf), by Eleanor O'Rourke and Mark Morrison, Institute of Nanotechnology, United Kingdom
  • Finance and Investor Models in Nanotechnology (pdf), by Tom Crawley, Pekka Koponen, Lauri Tolvas and Terhi Marttila, Spinverse, Finland
  • The Economic Contributions of Nanotechnology to Green and Sustainable Growth (pdf), by Philip Shapira and Jan Youtie, University of Manchester, UK; Arizona State University, USA; and Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
  • Models, Tools and Metrics Available to Assess the Economic Impact of Nanotechnology (pdf), by Katherine Bojczcuk and Ben Walsh, Oakdene Hollins, United Kingdom
  • The conclusion of the symposium was that the technology is sufficiently mature to justify the collecting of data to support the performance of economic impact assessments. The symposium report provides some of the reasoning behind this conclusion and identifies some of the potential challenges involved.
    Links to presentation slides and videos from the symposium plenary sessions are available at http://nano.gov/node/729
    Source: OECD