What is keeping nanotech innovation policymakers awake at night?

(Nanowerk News) This is the core theme at the ObservatoryNANO workshop at the EuroNanoForum on June 1, 2011 in Budapest: "What is keeping nanotechnology innovation policymakers awake at night?"
  • Are my policies having real impact on measurable indicators relevant to my policy objectives?
  • Do companies feel that government policy and strategy is helping them as much as they could and should?
  • Do other regions have a higher success rate in bringing research to the market?
  • The workshop program aims to provide answers to these burning questions based on facts and real life cases.
    Tentative Schedule – Wednesday, June 1
    09:00 MORRISON, Mark - Welcome and introduction
    09:10 TOKAMANIS, Dr Christos – DG Research Head of Unit Nanotechnology: The European Commission's perspective and strategies on ensuring nanotechnologies reach the market; including an outlook towards EIP's and FP8
    09:25 BAX, Laszlo - Work package leader ObservatoryNano on economic and business impacts of nanotechnologies and CEO of Bax & Willems Consulting Venturing: visualizing the full range of innovation policy instruments in a meaningful framework: projecting your instruments on your innovation ecosystem and innovation landscapes
    09:45 KOPPONEN, Pekka - CEO of Spinverse Capital and Consulting: The basic facts on all 1500+ European nanotechnology industries and what more than 100 of them think about their business, the role public policies can play in their growth, and their economic success
    10:05 MORRISON, Mark - CEO of the Institute of Nanotechnology: Europe's five Grand Challenges and how nanotechnology can help to overcome them: summarising nanotech impact in five compelling impact matrices
    10:25 MORGAN, Steve – DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs): Environmental policy challenges and how nanotechnology is considered part of the solution in the UK context [tbc]
    10:50 Break
    11:20 O'ROURKE, Eleanor - coordinator ObservatoryNano: highlights of the ObservatoryNano analysis regarding nanotechnology developments addressing major environmental challenges; main players in Europe, barriers to commercialization; and market opportunities
    11:35 LEE, Hye Won – Korea's science to market policies as specifically applied within the nanotech arena: how Asia is driving innovation through top-down priority setting with a focus on one of the five challenges.
    12:05 ObservatoryNano partner [tbc] - How European regions are addressing this same challenge
    12:20 CEO and founder of a nanotech startup [tbc] – building a mid sized nanotech company from scratch: the role of the government supporting entrepreneurship and how they sometimes get it wrong
    12:50 Q&A session: what do Europe's leading policy makers feel that the ObservatoryNano consortium should cover in the last year of its operation? Which facts and insights do you require to optimise your science-to-market policies in the nanotechnology arena?
    Source: Institute of Nanotechnology