The next big thing is small

Having a foresight is definitely an advantage. Today events unfold at dizzying speed. In 1973, Pierre Wack, Head of Corporate Planning for Royal Dutch/Shell, showed the power of thinking of possible developments and accounting for them in planning, which is today a management study topic – Scenario Planning. This enabled Shell to reap rich dividends.

In their own way futurists too are forecasting how the future would evolve. Universities have initiated undergraduate study programmes devoted to future studies. We are indeed quite preoccupied about our future! However, still some of us in planning utilise incremental additions to past data in prophesying the future, completely ignoring future scenarios.

Various industrial revolutions have changed societies and the world in which we live. Earlier we use to describe changes by using the type of material people developed and used hence the words Bronze Age, Iron Age, etc.

Now one cannot isolate one dominant material but more so devices and systems, hence the first industrial revolution of knitting and spinning machines and then steam engine. The complexity grew with mass scale manufacturing in the 1950s and moved on to information and biotech revolutions.

We are today literally on another revolution. When of course you are in the midst or haven’t seen the full scale of changes, you really do not recognise the revolution taking place around you – revolutions are declared only in retrospect! Today such changes one may ignore only at one’s peril.

New revolution

Nanotechnology is this new revolution in the making. It is all about material in nano scale – material as small as one billionth of a meter. Richard Feynman articulated the possibility, Norio Taniguchi named it, Eric Drexler spun the wildest possibilities and Binning and Rohere, two IBM researchers, showed that it indeed can be done.

The growth since early the 1980s in nano science is quite spectacular. When you listen and read on the possibilities espoused, this may be the mother of all industrial revolutions!

This is literally about one taking control over atoms and molecules so far as to rearrange them according to your needs and desires. This is almost control at the ultimate level. Armed with this ability, the choices available appear to be quite a lot.

You may go on moving and assembling atoms and structures as you do with letters in an alphabet. Different assemblies of letters lead to different words and rearranging words again leading to different sentences and meanings. These abilities may lead to some unwanted situations as well.

An ability to connect a carbon atom with another carbon atom with a different bond may lead to diamonds being formed at will from graphite! Diamonds then may no longer be women’s best friend, though a diamond would still be as tough as ever.

Alchemists are surfacing again but with an ultra modern touch. These developments are still into the future perhaps, though pretty amazing things have already happened. While we had many espousing benefits, there were who came up with the possible darker side of this new development.

Roaming nano soldiers waging wars and nanobots (nano level robots) loose across the landscape are few such imaginary concepts though scientists have said that real nanotechnology is different and much more amazing than any pipedream. Time will tell.

All-pervasive technology

Across the globe there are many national nanotechnology programmes all speeding ahead to capture a piece of the economic pie. It has been prophesied that by 2014 the revenue from NT will equal that of ICT and communications and be 10 times more than what one gets from biotechnology. Now this year is not so far down the time lane.

It is also stated that by 2020, 20% of all that is manufactured will have some contribution from nanotechnology. This is one all-pervasive technology crossing all aspects of products and services.

An aspect worth noting is, in this there is a lot of learning taken from nature. Mimicking biological phenomena within manmade devices and systems figure quite commonly. Understanding a gecko’s feet and its ability to defy gravity, lotus leaf effect for super cleaning and dirt free existence and colours of butterflies for dye free textiles are some popular examples that are getting synthetically emulated.

As we know, nature has a wonderful way of building from scratch without much waste. Man in haste has created lots of waste as we follow a top-down approach in manufacturing – assembling a lot of materials to create an item or two.

More from less

Nanotechnology is about making things from bottom up, realising more from less. More from less would give resources much better value and we will derive what we want but produce much less waste.

As the globe heads for a resource crunch with more joining into the human population, more from less is giving the exciting opportunity of extending the resources to provide more from less to more! This is a production shift that we really need. Fulfilling expectations but with less environmental burden. This is sustainable nanotechnology.

Are our planners aware of the potential? Do we factor these in our strategic planning process? We have definitely started our own national nanotechnology initiative only five years behind the United States. This is remarkably a plus factor.

It was in year 2000 that President Clinton rolled out his plan for US in nanotechnology. The Sri Lankan Government led by the President initiated the programme in 2006 August by way of a cabinet paper and went on to invest State funds jointly with private sector, creating a model that is quite unique. Thus, perhaps for the first time, State money on scientific research being an investment will realise return on investment once developments lead to commercialisation.

To move on from that beginning, Sri Lanka is today looking at the first Nanoscience Park at Homagama. Another warm welcome here, as the new technology needs such ecosystems to prosper and grow.

While open economic conditions in 1977 witnessed Export Processing Zones, the new strategies fuelling knowledge hub status require science parks with a commercial focus. The tiger economies of Asia have shown the potential of such developments, with Korea leading in this demonstration of connected development based on universities-state-industry.

Growth potential

Resulting developments from nanotechnology is likely to give more than a linear growth possibility to an economy. Understanding the relevant investing patterns is necessary. Non-liner growth potential demands planners to adopt different strategies.

Can we accept seven-to-eight year innovation led development cycles, which means going over the normal political timescales? With stability in place, this again is an option very much available to the planners. When rewards are high, the nature of risk taking needs to change as well.

It is important as a nation to position ourselves at a position of some strength in this new technology. With more than 70 national programmes in nanotechnology spanning the globe, achieving a position of eminence depends on people and planners who would support the 3Ps – Publications, Patents and Products.

We are currently minnows in this gathering of nations with hopes of breaking the shackles that have so far held us. This is more serious as well as an important engagement and warrants more support with understanding.

Today we are vying for supremacy in a context in the sporting arena that only boasts a few nations of the world. In a little corner in Biyagama, a national nanotechnology initiative has taken root with a big mandate. The objective is to deliver big to the economy by way of understanding the small world, working with both public and private sectors.

Nanotechnology has so far given to the global economy in a way that no other technology has delivered in such a time span. The expectation is from one to three trillion dollars in the next couple of years. Can we also capture a portion of this by innovative thinking and action? Is it wishful thinking for this island nation? I do not think so.



(Professor Ajith de Alwis is Professor of Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. With an initial BSc Chemical engineering Honours degree from Moratuwa, he proceeded to the University of Cambridge for his PhD. He is a Science Team Leader at the Sri Lanka Nanotechnology Institute. He can be reached via email on [email protected])