Innovation, Science, Patient and Impatient Capital

Part 2 of Global Trade and the IPO Exit Strategy

The short-termism of VC investment is a product of several major factors. One is ignorance of science which Carl Sagan exhorted about. “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology,” Sagan once wrote. Another factor is the nature of impatient capital’s expectation of an innovation’s emergence from “Death Valley,” the period of emergence from conception to near commercialization in 3-5 years.

Patient Investment

The U.S. investment in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) occurred in 2000.??Spurred by the National Science Foundation as a national priority, this long-term investment is a reminder of the critical role played by government and public investment in the R&D from which the commercialization of new enterprises emerges. In the green energy sector, an understanding of science leads to the conclusion that the U.S. and Germany are very close to commercializing?the nanotechnology breakthroughs that will affect the world's existence, as a result of patient, collective investment.?

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory:

?and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory:

?have jointly developed a new type of fuel cell catalyst that has more than 30 times the catalytic activity than conventional catalysts?and?uses 85% less platinum. This development is based on the dodecahedron:?

a three-dimensional, 12-sided, hollow structure which is a thousand times smaller in diameter than a human hair.

German Innovation?

The journal "Nature Communications," reported that researchers from the Ruhr-Universit?t Bochum, the Technical University of Munich and Universiteit Leiden found that the efficiency of electrodes can be increased for the purpose of water electrolysis. Typically, platinum is applied as catalyst, in order to accelerate the conversion of water to hydrogen and oxygen. For the reaction to be as efficient as possible, intermediates must not adhere too strongly or too weakly at the catalyst surface. Traditional electrodes bind intermediates too strongly. The team headed by Prof Dr Aliaksandr Bandarenka from the Department of Physics of Energy Conversion and Storage in Munich, Germany:

and Prof Dr Wolfgang Schuhmann from the Center for Electrochemical Sciences in Bochum, Germany:

have calculated how strongly intermediates must adhere to electrodes in order to most efficiently facilitate electrolysis. Their analysis revealed that traditional electrodes made of platinum, rhodium and palladium bind the intermediates a bit too strongly.

The researchers modified the properties of the platinum catalyst surface by applying a layer of copper atoms. With this additional layer, the system generated twice the amount of hydrogen than with a pure platinum electrode. This occurred when the researchers applied the copper layer directly under the top layer of the platinum atoms. The group observed another useful side effect: the copper layer extended the service life of the electrodes, by rendering them more corrosion-resistant.

The Results of Collaborative R&D and Patient Collective Investment?

The considerable insolation or solar irradiance hitting whole hemispheres of the Earth:

provide these large areas of the world with unique power generation and energy storage opportunities.?

The Third Industrial Revolution?

The Third Industrial Revolution is in the nanotechnology sector in which the U.S. has taken an R&D lead because of the formation of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) driven by the National Science Foundation and the $1.8 billion a year that has been allotted since 2000 to support nanotechnology and its interdisciplinary technologies.?

Compelling Economic Growth with Global Trade Finance?

The additional factor that impedes the world’s economic development is a lack of understanding of the relationship, the connection between the extraordinary developments affecting the green energy production capabilities of the irradiated world and the revolutionary advances in global trade finance.?

Existential Creative Destruction?

Climate change has made Joseph Alois Schumpeter’s creative destruction existential for humanity. While a number of regimes have proven themselves to be capable of destruction and violence:

fewer regimes have embraced both technology and moral purpose in pursuing creativity.?

Schumpeter once wrote that only the multinational corporations in capitalist nations have the deep pockets to engage in the R&D that drives cycles of creative destruction. Schumpeter was wrong. It is enlightened Democracy that provides the patient and collective (public and private) investment that drives the world’s economic growth: