Summary

There is currently a gap between various innovation lifecycle conceptualizations and analyses that mostly exist at the micro level of product lifecycles, firms, university project grants or at the macro level of technological paradigms that obstructs timely decision making and strategizing. Analysis of wider systems dynamics but with a timescale more appropriate for policy makers and companies could contribute to a better understanding of the needs and complementarities – such as other technologies, capabilities, institutions, involvement of actors – that emerge during the lifecycle of emerging technologies and accelerate innovation in a wide range of industries. This project therefore examines the lifecycle dynamics of nanotechnology as an emerging family of technologies not at the micro or macro level but at the body of technology level as a more appropriate alternative to strategizing for innovation while drawing on earlier lifecycle concepts.

The empirical investigation primarily relies on semi-automated content analysis of policy documents of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), a US government nanotechnology R&D initiative with an aim to coordinate nanotechnology innovation activity across several federal agencies and the wider nanotechnology R&D community. The NNI’s endeavour of interagency coordination sustained for over 20 years provides a systematic accumulation of knowledge on nanotechnology dynamics with potential implications for lifecycle analyses and strategic development. Nanotechnology patents also analysed as differences between product and process innovation provide interesting insights into the lifecycle of nanotechnology.

The results indeed confirm that there is a wider lifecycle happening at the level of a family of technology where different innovation activities emerge and re-emerge as approximated through federal agency involvement and patent activity. This can be exemplified by the pathway from nanoelectronics as indicated by patent data, through solar photovoltaic (PV) cells to quantum technology as shown by the involvement of the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation – where semiconductor fabrication for microchips that was developed in the earliest stages of the nanotechnology lifecycle could essentially be used for semiconductor fabrication of solar PV cells and more recently for nanoengineered high precision fabrication of quantum technologies.