Entrepreneurs: Graphene will Change the World
by Miki SaxonEver noticed that most discussion and commentary about entrepreneurs center on innovation and little-to-none of it will, in fact, change the world.
Mostly they are about finding and rating personal and businesses services, locating partners, whether for hook-ups or long-term, and other such weighty matters.
Additionally, other than the bio-X stuff, innovation is dominated by software.
But software, including the giants like Facebook and Google haven’t fundamentally changed things as much as is stated—and both could be easily replaced relative to something as basic to our modern civilization as silicon.
Is there anything happening that does have the potential to fundamentally change our world?
Yes, there is and its name is graphene.
The American Chemical Society said in 2012 that graphene was discovered to be 200 times stronger than steel and so thin that a single ounce of it could cover 28 football fields. Chinese scientists have created a graphene aerogel, an ultralight material derived from a gel, that is one-seventh the weight of air. A cubic inch of the material could balance on one blade of grass.
Graphene is transparent, conductive, flexible and inexpensive.
The heavy lifting to develop graphene and uses for it is being done by old people in stogy, non-entrepreneurial companies, such as IBM, Nokia and SanDisk and especially Samsung along with a number of universities, with nary a twenty-something in sight.
Because the electronics industry so invested in silicon (software, including the cloud and apps run on hardware) it’s doubtful they will move quickly to embrace Graphene, in spite of its ability to truly revolutionize the entire industry.
Not so the Gates Foundation, which already paid to develop a graphene-based condom that is thin, light and impenetrable.
If your dream is to truly change the world, whether now or later, consider graphene.
Who knows, your idea could lead not just to a new company, but to an entirely new industry; not to employing a few thousand, but to jobs for millions.
Flickr image credit: Duncan Hill
August 28th, 2014 at 1:15 am
[…] May I wrote that graphene has the potential to change the world and it seems that Elon Musk plans to take advantage of […]