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NEW YORK, May 18, 2004 — The NanoBusiness Alliance, after four years and a key role in passage of a $3.7 billion legislation package, is entering a new era.
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The industry group’s co-founder and executive director, Mark Modzelewski announced at the Alliance’s third annual conference today that he was moving over to newly formed Lux Research Inc., a nanotech business advisory firm backed by Lux Capital Group LLC.
Sean Murdock, executive director of AtomWorks, a nanotech development organization in Illinois, will take over the helm at the Alliance, which co-founder Nathan Tinker will continue to help lead.
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Murdock told Small Times that the transition will happen over the course of the summer and that he sees the Alliance as embarking on a new phase with a new set of challenges — among them, “engaging a broader range of businesses and inviting them to the table,” he said. Murdock said he plans to create a richer dialogue with the general public on environmental and other issues of general concern.
In 2000, Modzelewski and Tinker set out to create an organization to bring together the nascent and disparate elements of corporate, government and entrepreneurial enterprises engaged in transforming nanoscale science into commercial reality.
With a nanotech public stock offering on the calender (Nanosys Inc.) and broad nanotech legislation enshrined in law, the energetic and outspoken face of nanotech commercialization, Modzelewski, said he decided it was time for his next challenge to turn the organization over to Murdock, a proven organizer and former McKinsey consultant.
“We gave birth to this, but Sean is the kind of person who can help it grow,” said Modzelewski, who as a managing director at Lux Research will focus on public policy and corporate consulting efforts.
Alliance board member Scott Rickert, president of Nanofilm Ltd. in Valley View, Ohio, said that Murdock was the right person to take over the reins and do “the blocking and tackling” that the Alliance needs to do as a maturing industry support organization.
As nanotech commercialization gathers momentum, Rickert said, the Alliance needs to grow with it, becoming more international and engaged in bringing businesses together. Rickert suggested that next year’s NanoBusiness conference also include a full-fledged trade fair.
Tinker said that the NanoBusiness Alliance will encourage more trade, exchange and manufacturing opportunities with nanotech firms around the world. He also said that with an increasing need for educational and training assets, the Alliance is working on a career-oriented Web site.
While Modzelewski said he expects to keep a hand in the Alliance’s policy efforts, both he and Tinker reported that they expect Murdock’s stewardship to focus on building membership as well as developing more services such as group insurance for nanotech startups.
As the Alliance enters its next phase, Murdock has his work cut out for him. Efforts to launch regional “hubs” have so far failed to gain the kind of traction the Alliance had hoped for. “I think we expected those to self-assemble,” Tinker said.
Such logistic limitations notwithstanding, Lux Capital Managing Partner Josh Wolfe said that under Modzelewski, the NanoBusiness Alliance evolved from “a forum for exchanging ideas about an emerging area of technology, a place for the questions to be asked,” to an industry-shaping organization with more than 250 members, including General Electric Co. and JP Morgan Chase & Co.
Providing the answers to those commercial questions, said Wolfe, was the raison d’être for launching Lux Research, and a logical segue for Modzelewski.
As Peter Hébert, chief executive of the strategic services firm explained, the company’s business model is to provide corporations, investors and governments with ongoing and actionable business advice and information services on all facets of nanotechnology.
Neither a conventional consultancy, market research firm or traditional equity analysis shop, Lux Research’s ambitious vision is to offer large companies and organizations nanotech’s big picture.
Hébert said the firm would anticipate the macroeconomic ripples and complex reverberations nanotech is likely to cause throughout the business world. How, for example, might Nano-Tex-enhanced fabrics that require less-frequent washing impact the sale of Tide, not to mention the suppliers of laundry soap raw ingredients? Procter & Gamble would, presumably, pay good money for such a steady intelligence feed, he said.
Rather than simply engaging clients in discrete projects or producing generalized reports and studies, Hebert said, the company would pursue revenue on a subscription model that would provide enduring relationships with clients and offer them a raft of research and analytical assets, as well as access to a network of Lux nanotech experts.
Pricing, Hébert noted, would vary with the depth of services a particular client wanted.
In addition to Lux Capital, investors include Gerson Lehrman Group; Eric Greenberg, founder of Acumen Sciences; and DeSoto Jordan, a co-founder of Perot Systems.