ABSTRACT
According to representatives of industries involved in bringing nanotechnology products to the market, nanoentrepreneurship is under high tension: Customers want innovation and new products. Nanoentrepreneurs strive to satisfy them as part of their strategy to develop new business activities. Yet they also know that if a product turns out to be damaging to people’s health or the environment, they will have to pay the hard price for it. This fairly recent phenomenon has intensified strongly as part of environmental awareness. Nanoentrepreneurs do not want repeats of what happened with, for example, asbestos: U.S. studies showed that as of 2002, over 700,000 individuals had filed asbestos lawsuits, and the eventual cost of asbestos litigation has been estimated at between $200 and $265 billion (White 2004).
