"Disruptive technologies emerging from laboratories around the globe drive many organizations' future opportunities and risks. To be successfully adaptive, an organization must be able to speedily identify which technologies will be significant, to analyze their potential impacts, and to understand the uncertainties of their commercialization. Making the uncertainties about the future explicit is the key to understanding the possibilities and making good choices about where and when to invest." Nick Evans, Bill Ralston, Andrew Broderick, Strategy & Leadership

There are some interesting examples of disruptive technologies\Kfitzat Haderech technologies in the making today. When emerging these technologies will create a major difference in our lifes. In just solar power alone there are room for major advancement.

Solar power - "With the emergence of low-cost thin-film solar, the rapid evolution of concentrator photovoltaics, and the increased capabilities of thermal solar concentration systems, the solar energy industry has begun to shine brightly". Higgins, James M (http://www.futurist.com).

• Solar power - As oil prices have climbed, so has venture investment in alternative energy. According to VentureDeal, a venture-tracking service in Menlo Park, CA, solar-power startups in particular have seen a three-year surge, from a low of no venture investment in the third quarter of 2005 to a high of more than half a billion dollars in the second quarter of 2008.
• Solar power at night – storing solar power for night time. "Without a good way to store electricity on a large scale, solar power is useless at night. One promising storage option is a new kind of battery made with all-liquid active materials. Prototypes suggest that these liquid batteries will cost less than a third as much as today's best batteries and could last significantly longer."
• Prism has engineered a new type of solar concentrator by inscribing holograms in a transparent medium sealed between pieces of glass. Much of the light that strikes a conventional solar cell generates wasted heat rather than electricity, but Prism's holograms can divert unproductive wavelengths of light away from the cell. As a consequence, it can concentrate the productive wavelengths more intensely without fear of overheating. The company claims that it can concentrate light two to three times as much as its competitors can.
• CaliSolar - Most solar cells are made from very pure--and thus expensive--silicon. But ­CaliSolar can make do with silicon that has a thousand times the impurities and can cost a sixth as much. That could mean real savings, since silicon can represent a quarter to a third of the cost of making solar cells.

Hydrogen

• Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, has great potential as an energy source. Unlike petroleum, it can be easily generated from renewable energy sources. It is also nonpolluting, and forms water as a harmless byproduct during use. Yet it is so difficult to store that its use as a fuel has been limited.

  There might be an Israeli start up that can store Hydrogen & release it in a safe and efficient way.

Drug finding “Despite enormous investments in basic science, technology development, and experimentation with new organizational and management structures, pharmaceutical product development still requires at least 10 to 15 years and costs between $500 millionand $2 billion (1, 2). Furthermore, there is a widening productivity gap: Research and developmen spending continues to increase, yet the number of new therapeutic chemical and biological entities approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been declining since the late 1990s (3). Overcoming these and other obstacles to increased productivity may require an overhaul of the R&D paradigm (4); some have called for a "disruptive" transformation of the industry (5)”.

• Biological drugs: Drugs of the future - “Biologic drugs are large, complex molecules derived from living organisms. Recently, U.S. sales of biologic drugs exceed $40 billion annually and global sales were over $112 billion. Sales are concentrated among a few blockbuster products as just 27 biologic products represent approximately 87 percent of total biologic drug sales”.

• The growing allure of rational drug desing: Structure-based approaches for drug design and virtual screening give new meaning to Louis Pasteur's saying "Chance favors the prepared mind." In silico methods are becoming more efficient in allowing scientists to hone in on and manipulate specific molecular structures of interest. 

• Pharmacogenomics: the promise of personalized medicine: ”Pharmacogenetics identifies interactions between drugs and individual genes. Pharmacogenomics seeks to uncover significant associations between genomic patterns and clinical outcomes—correlations that produce useful predictive knowledge, allowing clinical treatment decision making to be based upon more rational criteria than today's probabilistic approach, which is largely based upon educated guesswork.”

• Drug-diagnostic Co-development: “The development of genomics-based molecular diagnostics that are linked to therapeutic products is critical to targeted drug developments of the future.” There is a growing trend for co-development partnerships to be made during the early stages of drug development. An analysis of ongoing co-development projects indicates that more deals are being concluded well in advance of Phase." 

• New DNA And RNA Aptamers Offer Unique Therapeutic: "A novel class of drugs composed of single strands of DNA or RNA, called aptamers, can bind protein targets with a high strength and specificity and are currently in clinical development as treatments for a broad range of common diseases."

• High-performance, Low-cost Imaging Modalities Gain Appeal in Life Sciences Arena http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/6eb7b8/european_market_fo 

Other areas of interest