Abstract
Since the early 2000s, investment into research and development in the nanosciences and nanotechnologies has been increasing, leading to a diverse array of research centres, dedicated firms, and hubs around the world. They might be analysed as industrial districts, but there is still little actual production involved. In any case, they are sites to trace three local-global interactions (in nanotechnology as a domain of research and application) that have not always been looked at this way: (1) global promises and work towards realizing them; (2) technological platforms; (3) institutional entrepreneurs realizing things locally inspired by the global promise and using it as a resource. We might still speak of nanodistricts, but it would be a new kind of district compared with the classical Marshallian notion.
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- 1.
The data used to inform this chapter is drawn from institutional archives, particularly those of the NanoNed programme housed at the University of Twente and the personal archives of the founder of MiNaTec, Jean Therme. Other data include semi-structured interviews over the period 2004–2014, annual reports of the institutes mentioned and email interactions with key informants.
- 2.
An “umbrella term” is a term that covers a wide-ranging subject rather than representing a specific definition. In this way umbrella terms are inherently ambiguous, can combine notions of promises, potential and ongoing activities, and communities involved. Umbrella terms can become a rhetorical denominator for an emerging field – a label to refer to, which demarcates a world of research and development whilst remaining loosely defined.
- 3.
Andersen (2011) offers an interesting case study of the uptake of nanotechnology in the Danish construction sector. He shows that nano-enabled products were touted at first but that most firms are now silent about their use of nano-enabled products.
- 4.
There are a few studies of concentrations of activity in nanotechnologies in the US, on the basis of data related to publications and patents (see especially Youtie and Shapira 2010). However, they do not offer much data on the dynamics. Some of the concentrations of activity identified coincide with biotechnology concentrations and may well have built on that. There are also new concentrations (e.g. in Atlanta, Georgia).
- 5.
See the Transmission Electron Microscopes at the Centre for Electron Nanoscopy (http://www.cen.dtu.dk/english/Microscopes, accessed May 6, 2014).
- 6.
www.minalogic.com (accessed 6th May 2014).
- 7.
See Joly and Kaufmann (2008) for some of the context.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
Eindhoven also houses a public/private research centre with a focus on applied micro-nano-electronics, Point One (http://www.point-one.nl/).
- 11.
With further extensions into embedded systems through the Belgian-Dutch network DSP Valley (http://www.dspvalley.com/).
- 12.
This cluster exemplifies the fact that, in addition to its “local buzz”, there are also many “global pipelines” (Bathelt et al. 2004).
- 13.
For example, the Centre for Research in Nanoengineering: https://www.upc.edu/crne/
- 14.
We use the French term “filière” here to indicate a concatenation of operations and activities, together with actors involved, their dependencies and partial coordination. It is a broader notion than (product) value chain, also because it includes public institutions. And it can be applied regionally, e.g. “la filière aérospatiale en Ile de France.”
- 15.
- 16.
Merz and Biniok (2010) make a similar point, but they consider any facility or set of equipment shared by science and industry as a technological platform, and then inquire into their organization and user models. While this is important, it does not touch on what we see as a defining characteristic, that a platform allows the pursuit of different technological options, and so stimulates clustering of firms and other actors pursuing one or another of these options. They do emphasize, following Keating and Cambrosio (2003), the difference between platforms as passive supports and platforms as springboards for future action. It is the latter aspect that we focus on.
- 17.
At an early stage, one sector may dominate, as in the early days of the Grenoble cluster with its focus on the semiconductor sector. But then nanomedicine was added.
- 18.
iNano is an interdisciplinary research centre located at Aarhus University (Denmark) where the departments of physics, chemistry, molecular biology, and biological sciences collaborate.
- 19.
Lab-on-a-chip combines microfabrication technologies with nanotechnology components with a focus on the manipulation and use of fluids at those scales.
- 20.
See Parandian (2012) for details and context.
- 21.
Interestingly, in OLAE there are now also attempts to define competence centres (via EC funded projects that aim for this) and to coordinate across clusters, for example to define which cluster is going to interact with potential end-users about which category of products (Parandian 2012).
- 22.
One interesting development is how R&D Centres (Innovation Lab in Heidelberg and Holst Centre in Eindhoven) create production lines for OLAE which can be used as test beds. SMEs can avail themselves of this possibility to try out their product options.
- 23.
This is a general point. Decisions from key actors have repercussions for other actors in the domain. For example, in lithography development, the decision of Motorola to shift its investment from one development path to another required other actors to reconsider their choices (cf. Sydow et al. 2007).
- 24.
Examples of such initiatives include the Plastics Electronics Foundation and the related Innovation Fab established in Eindhoven (Parandian 2012).
- 25.
See websites www.nanoned.nl (total budget 235 M€, half of which funded by the central government under a special funding scheme) and www.nanonextnl.nl (total budget 250 M€, of which 125 M€ government funding and contributions from industry adding up to about 30 M€). These budgets cover a period of about 5 years.
- 26.
David Reinhoudt’s role as an institutional entrepreneur can be compared with the role of Jean Therme in Grenoble, briefly discussed in Sect. 7.3.
- 27.
BSIK funding (originally called ICES-KIS) derived from the windfall income of the Dutch State from the sale of natural gas, which was ear-marked to be spent on infrastructural projects, including knowledge infrastructure. The rules had to be stretched a bit (by entrepreneurial civil servants) because it was difficult to show immediate economic and social relevance for nanoscience. After some advance funding from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, from 2003 onward, the main funding started in 2005.
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Robinson, D.K.R., Rip, A., Delemarle, A. (2016). Nanodistricts: Between Global Nanotechnology Promises and Local Cluster Dynamics. In: Merz, M., Sormani, P. (eds) The Local Configuration of New Research Fields. Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22683-5_7
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