ABSTRACT
Nanotechnology R&D funding started being documented on a systematic basis in the early 1990s. Before that time, although there were programs focusing on atomic manipulation, nanotechnology R&D as such was too small to be significant. In a period of about ten years, the total global investment in nanotechnology R&D, public and private, reached around 15 billion euros in 2006 (Sources: Cientifica, Lux Research Inc., European Commission, and NNI). This amounted to nearly 0.05 percent of the world gross domestic product (GDP), some €32.6 trillion in 2006, based on the gross world product (GWP) combined data of the CIA World Factbook, IMF, and World Bank. Different sources such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) predict that the market for nanotechnology-based products will be worth at least a trillion euros in 2015, and the consultancy Lux Research Inc. reports that by 2014, $2.6 trillion in global manufactured goods will incorporate nanotech (Lux Research Inc. 2007). Based on a projected annual growth rate of the GWP of about 5 percent in 2006–7 (World Bank and National Bureau of Economic Research figures), the nanotechnology industry—which was still negligible in terms of marketed products in 2000—would then contribute about 3.5 percent of the GWP.
