The Cautionary Tale of A123 Systems: Gee-whiz technologies don’t trump market realities

The Cautionary Tale of A123 Systems

The Cautionary Tale of A123 Systems: Gee-whiz technologies don’t trump market realities

If the recent bankruptcy of A123 Systems holds any lesson for us it could be that any nanotech-enabled technology that places itself squarely in competition with an established technology has to be not only incrementally better than its nearest competitors, it has to be better than what it's trying to displace. Some have predicted that the A123 bankruptcy will be painted as another Solyndra, the California maker of photovoltaics that failed despite heavy backing from the Obama administration . Of course, when Konarka, a solar cell company from Massachusetts, the state Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was once governor of, went belly up earlier this year, some suggested that it could be spun into “Romneys’s Solyndra." The underlying problems of A123 Systems, Solyndra, and Konarka are not political ones of governmental policies —they 're illustrations of the fut...

Full article: http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotec...

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