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NIST
GCR 02–841
Between Invention and Innovation
An Analysis of Funding for Early-Stage Technology Development
Annex II. COMPANY
NARRATIVES
This section presents brief
profiles of early-stage technology development in four of the companies
whose representatives participated in Between Invention and Innovation
workshops: Affymetrix (Ken Nussbacher), Energy Conversion Devices (Nancy
Bacon), Marlow Industries (Hylan Lyon), and PolyStor Corporation (James
Kaschmitter).
Four case studies, separately
published, examine in detail the experiences of selected project participants
in managing the process of transition from invention to innovation, providing
specific examples with successful projects. The subjects (and authors)
of those case studies are: Band of Angels (Jonathan Westrup); Caliper
(Mona Ashiya); GE/Amorphous Silicon (Bob Kolasky); PPL Technologies (Thomas
F. Livesey). Each of those full case studies provides an overview of
the history of the firm or project group, a discussion of the evolution
of the technology that forms the basis of the effort, a description of
the enablers and constraints that the effort faced as it moved from invention
to innovation, and a discussion of how this fits into the current thinking
on public support of such work. The case studies are available on the
Advanced Technology Program’s website, <http://www.atp.nist.gov>.
1.
AFFYMETRIX
Affymetrix,
located in Santa Clara, California, is a leader in the field of DNA chip
technology. Affymetrix has developed its GeneChip system and related
microarray technologies as a platform for acquiring, analyzing, and managing
genetic information. Affymetrix sells its products directly to pharmaceutical
and biotechnology companies, academic research groups, private foundations,
and clinical laboratories in the United States and Europe. Affymetrix
has more than 750 employees.
Affymetrix is a spin-off
from Affymax. The latter was founded in 1988 by Dr. Alejandro Zaffaroni—who
also launched Syntex Laboratories, Alza Corp. and Dnax Research Institute—to
accelerate the drug discovery process. The traditional approach in drug
discovery has been to synthesize or discover new candidate drugs and
then test their activities one at a time. This is a tedious and cumbersome
approach, so speeding up or automating this process is of substantial
interest to pharmaceutical companies. To launch Affymax, Zaffaroni assembled
a list of star scientists, including Carl Djerassi, Joshua Lederberg,
and Peter Schulz. The firm’s board of scientific directors included
four Nobel laureates. The combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput
screening technology developed by Affymax combined synthetic chemistry
and photolithography to enable synthesis and screening of compounds on
chips.
A variant of this technology
was developed by Steve Fodor and his colleagues at Affymax, using solid-phase
chemistry and photolithography to achieve spatially addressable parallel
chemical synthesis to yield a well-defined microarray of peptides or
oligonucleotides. This formed the basis of Affymetrix’s technology.
The team’s initial focus of using chips to synthesize peptides useful
in the drug discovery process did not work very well, and Fodor shifted
his attention to DNA probes, with extremely successful results. The work
was published in Science in early 1991 in what is now considered a landmark
paper. The original team that developed the idea—Fodor and his colleagues
Pirrung, Read, and Stryer—won the Intellectual Property Owners Association’s
Distinguished Inventor award in 1993. Affymax spun off Affymetrix the
same year. The new firm raised $21 million in its Series A private placement,
then another $39 million in its Series B placement. It went public in
1996 with a valuation of $300 million.
At the time of the spinoff,
Affymetrix had no specific product—in fact, its principals did not
even think of it as a product company. Through further development of
this technology over the next five years, however, Affymetrix developed
the initial versions of its first commercial product, the GeneChip system.
Affymetrix’s R&D expenditures rose over this period from $1.57
million in 1991 to $6.57 million in 1993 and $12.42 million in 1995 (funded
internally as well as through research contact and grants). The GeneChip
system consisted of disposable DNA probe arrays containing gene sequences
on a chip, instruments to process the probe arrays, and software to analyze
and manage genetic information. The company commenced commercial sales
of the GeneChip system and an HIV probe array for research use in 1996.
As of March of that year, Affymetrix had been able to sell nine GeneChip
systems, all intended solely for research use. Still, Affymetrix’s
stated goal in its IPO prospectus was to establish the GeneChip system
that it had developed as the platform of choice for acquiring, analyzing,
and managing complex genetic information in order to improve the diagnosis,
monitoring, and treatment of disease. By September 2001, the majority
of the top pharmaceutical companies, over a dozen biotech firms, and
more than 1,000 academic institutions were customers for the firm's GeneChip
and other technologies. At the time of its public offering, all of Affymetrix's
revenues had been derived from payments from collaborative research and
development agreements and government research grants ($4.63 million
in 1995). By 2000, Affymetrix's R&D expenses were $57.4 million and
its product sales for that year were $173 million..
With the aim of broadening
its product offerings, Affymetrix acquired firms such as Genetic Microsystems,
to help it access the spotted array market, and Neomorphic, to advance
its bioinformatics software and enhance chip design. Affymetrix also
formed and financed Perlegen Sciences at a cost of about $10 million
to leverage its technology to perform whole-genome scanning and assess
genetic variance. Beyond its internal R&D efforts, Affymetrix entered
into a variety of collaborative agreements and alliances with other firms
to help develop and improve its products, even during its earlier stages.
In late 1994, the company entered into a collaborative agreement with
Hewlett-Packard to develop an advanced scanner for use with the GeneChip
probe arrays. The firm had two agreements with the Genetics Institute
in 1994 and 1995 relating to use of GeneChip technology to measure gene
expression in order for the Genetics Institute to develop new therapeutic
proteins. In 1996, Affymetrix entered into an agreement with Incyte Pharmaceuticals,
Inc., to explore potential uses of DNA probe arrays in the area of gene
expression. In the same year, Affymetrix entered into an agreement with
Glaxo (now Glaxo-Wellcome) to design, test, and supply probe arrays to
demonstrate use of the arrays in detecting polymorphisms in specific
genes.
Affymetrix illustrates
one stage of the innovation process, whereby a startup firm that is engaged
in generating databases or creating software tools, even if these are
not its ultimate product, enters into meaningful collaboration with larger
firms that are in essence outsourcing part of their R&D to these
startups. In Affymetrix’s case, this is not the business model that
it is pursuing today, but it was a useful stream of revenue for it that
time.
Building an intellectual
property base is an important component of Affymetrix’s strategy.
The company believes that its success depends in part on its ability
to obtain patent protection for its products and processes, to preserve
its copyrights and trade secrets, and to acquire licenses related to
enabling technology or products used with the company’s GeneChip
technology. At the end of the year 2000, Affymetrix had 105 patents.
License fees and royalties also contributed about 10 percent of the firm’s
income in that year.
Affymetrix also relied
on numerous government grants for funding various components of its research
program and technology development efforts. For example, the firm received
over $500,000 in 1992 and 1993 under a Small Business Innovation Research
grant from the Department of Energy (one of the many SBIR grants that
it has received). The first phase of the grant helped demonstrate proof
of the concept of using large arrays of DNA probes in genetic analysis.
The Phase II grant was intended to assist Affymetrix in moving the technology
towards commercialization. Scientists at Affymetrix also received several
grants from the National Institutes of Health. For example, Fodor was
a principal investigator on a three-year $5.5 million NIH grant. One
component of this grant addressed the development of chip-based sequencing,
resequencing, and sequence checking and physical, genetic, and functional
mapping. A technology development component addressed the production
of chips and the development of instrumentation and software specific
to the chip applications. Affymetrix’s biggest government grant
came from the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) of the National Institute
of Standards and Technology (NIST). A consortium established by Affymetrix
was awarded a $31.5 million, five-year grant in 1994 to develop miniaturized
DNA diagnostic systems. Under this grant, Affymetrix directly received
$21.5 million, some of which was used to fund activities at a number
of collaborating institutions as subcontractors to the project. As part
of this grant, Affymetrix and its partner Molecular Dynamics collaborated
with researchers at the California Institute of Technology, Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory, Stanford University, the University of
California at Berkeley, and the University of Washington to develop the
next generation of diagnostic devices to capitalize on the advances of
the Human Genome Project.
These kinds of collaborative
research efforts are a deliberate strategy of Affymetrix, carried over
from Affymax, to maintain simultaneously within the firm an entrepreneurial
environment as well as an academic environment. The firm had a goal to
attract preeminent researchers and convince them that the company was
a place that was carrying out cutting-edge technology. Steve Fodor, for
example, was persuaded to leave his postdoctoral research position at
the University of California, Berkeley—despite his initial lack
of interest in leaving academia—by the possibility of continuing
to work with some the field’s brightest academics as well as having
in-house funds with which to do research. The freedom to seek outside
grants to pursue research peripheral to the company’s core strategies
was also considered a very important tool in attracting very high-quality
people to the project. It has been very valuable to Affymetrix to be
able to attract staff who continue to keep their academic contacts through
participation in preparing grant proposals, and who have the freedom
to pursue ideas to which they have dedicated their career, while gradually
migrating into a commercial environment where more tangible products
can be generated. The exercise of building a consortium of other companies
to work together under the ATP project, for example, fed a very collegial
environment where researchers worked hard with the best people in their
field around the world, pushing these technologies to a stage at which
they could be commercialized successfully.
2.
ENERGY CONVERSION DEVICES
Energy
Conversion Devices, Inc. (ECD), is a technology and
manufacturing company located in Troy, Michigan, and founded
in 1960 by Stanford and Iris Ovshinsky. The firm is engaged in
the invention, engineering, development, and commercialization
of new materials, products and production technology with a focus
on atomically engineered amorphous materials. ECD’s business
strategy is technology-driven and focused on the development
and commercialization of enabling technologies for use in new
global markets and industries, such as alternative energy and
information technology. ECD has just over 500 employees.
ECD has three core product areas:
- energy storage—nickel
metal hydride (NiMH) batteries and hydrogen storage systems;
- energy generation—regenerative
fuel cells and thin-film, flexible, low-cost (solar) photovoltaic
(PV) products; and
- information
and data storage & retrieval—phase-change
optical and electrical memory technology.
All of these core products
are based on ECD’s proprietary materials and technologies in the
area of disordered and amorphous materials.
ECD’s early-stage
technology development often starts with some internal funding but is
generally dependent, for carrying the R&D forward, on government/industry
partnerships (involving, for example, the Department of Energy, the National
Institute of Standards and Technology’s Advanced Technology Program,
or other government agencies). ECD also routinely establishes joint ventures,
licensing arrangements, and other strategic alliances with major companies
around the world to bring its products to market and generate funds for
R&D efforts. ECD’s direct R&D expenditures in the year ending
June 2001 were $34.7 million, of which licensees, government agencies,
and industrial partners accounted for $26.9 million and internal funds
accounted for the rest. In the area of photovoltaics, for example, ECD
formed a strategic alliance and joint venture in April 2000 with N.V.
Bekaert S.A. from the Netherlands to manufacture and sell solar cells.
United Solar, an ECD joint venture that will manufacture these PV-based
products, is building a plant with an annual capacity of twenty-five
MW. These products—for remote power applications, telecommunications,
PV-powered lighting systems, and building-integrated PV systems—are
based on a sophisticated multi-layer amorphous silicon thin-film solar
cell developed originally by ECD. The spectrum-splitting technology of
this cell allows it to convert the different visible and near-infrared
wavelengths of sunlight efficiently. The United Solar spectrum-splitting
multi-junction design now holds all the world’s records for amorphous
silicon solar-cell efficiency. These solar cells are manufactured in
a unique continuous “roll-to-roll” solar-cell deposition process,
also developed by ECD, in which the thin-film semiconductor layers that
comprise the cell are sequentially deposited in separate, dynamically
isolated, plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) chambers
as the stainless steel substrate progresses through the machine.
ECD began developing this
thin-film PV technology as well as the roll-to-roll manufacturing process
during the 1970s. The firm initially started its PV work with internal
funding. ECD also had an agreement—essentially a license focused
on R&D—in 1979 with Arco. At this time, ECD had small, laboratory-sized
prototypes. Arco ended up withdrawing in 1982 from the relationship because
the limited size of the PV market was unattractive. ECD then formed a
joint venture with Standard Oil (SOHIO) in 1981 that built a pilot plant
to test the roll-to-roll technology—the first time this was done
on a pilot-plant basis. This joint venture was terminated after British
Petroleum took over Standard Oil. Soon after this, ECD was approached
by Canon, which was using amorphous silicon technology in its copiers.
The usefulness of ECD’s amorphous silicon technology for copier
drums, as well as Canon’s increasing interest in PV, resulted in
the signing of a license agreement between the two firms that was basically
a $15 million paid-up license providing ECD with funds for further research
and development. In 1990, Canon and ECD upgraded their relationship to
a joint venture, named United Solar, that was focused on market development.
Eventually, Bekaert provided the funds by which ECD bought out Canon’s
share of the joint venture.
The United Solar joint
venture built a five-MW plant that was based on roll-to-roll technology
that had been refined enough to set up a production line. The triple-junction
solar cells produced by this plant were the result of R&D efforts
on solar-cell design over the past decade. The relationship with Bekaert
is the latest step, then, in what has been a long road to the development
and commercialization of ECD’s advanced photovoltaic technologies.
Bekaert’s total investment commitment relating to this strategic
alliance is $84 million, which includes $24 million provided to ECD as
partial payment to purchase Canon’s stock in United Solar and an
investment of $60 million in United Solar and in Bekaert ECD Solar Systems,
another joint venture that assembles and sells the solar panels and systems
manufactured by United Solar. ECD has also benefited from technology
development contracts with the U.S. Department of Energy (through, for
example, the PV:BONUS, the Thin Film partnership, and the PVMAT program
) and the Department of Defense.
Based on R&D that ECD
conducted in the 1980s, ECD and United Solar have developed, and United
Solar and Bekaert ECD Solar Systems are manufacturing and selling, products
for the building industry. These include photovoltaic PV shingles, metal
roofing products, and PV laminate products that emulate conventional
roofing materials. United Solar received the Popular Science 1996 Best
of What’s New Grand Award and the Discover Magazine 1997 Technology
Innovation Award for its flexible solar shingles.
Protecting its leadership
position in the science and technology of new materials, products, and
production systems is an important component of ECD’s strategy.
As of early 2001, it had 354 valid and current United States patents
and 832 foreign patents. Its proprietary PV technology is protected by
165 U.S. and 622 foreign patents. In 1982, it had thirty-five U.S. patents
in this area; by 1986 it had 52 patents; by 1988 it had 107 patents;
and by 1990, 122 patents. Thus its patent portfolio has grown along with
its technical and business development of amorphous silicon PV technology.
U.S. government agencies
have played many other key roles in ECD’s early-stage technology
development by helping the company get to a point where it can prove
feasibility of its technologies and develop prototypes so that it can
attract strategic alliances, partnerships and joint ventures. For example,
ECD received a grant from ATP to demonstrate a new optical disk manufacturing
technology that allowed it to apply its expertise in roll-to-roll vacuum
manufacturing and phase-change materials to develop a process technology
that both formats and coats DVD disks as part of a continuous, low-cost
manufacturing system. The technology developed with the help of this
project eventually led to a joint venture with General Electric. The
evolution of work done under another ATP grant between 1997 and 2001
to develop advanced materials technology for future low-cost, high-energy-density
improved NiMH batteries using magnesium-based hydrogen storage materials
eventually led ECD to build a relationship with Texaco on hydrogen storage
technology. ECD was also part of the U.S. Advanced Batteries Consortium
through which it received about $30 million for its work on NiMH batteries
that resulted, in part, in a joint venture with General Motors.
3.
MARLOW INDUSTRIES
Marlow
Industries is the global leader in thermoelectric
cooling technology. Established in 1973 in Dallas, Texas, as
a spin-off from Texas Instruments, Marlow Industries has developed
and manufactured thermoelectric coolers (TECs) and subsystems
for the military, aerospace, medical, high-speed integrated circuits,
and telecommunications markets. It is a technology leader; its
materials are the most efficient, about 15 percent above the
average of all other firms’ offerings, including those in
Russia, Japan, and the United States. Marlow has over 700 employees.
The basic idea underlying
thermoelectric devices is fairly old. Thermoelectric coolers are solid-state
heat pumps that operate on the Peltier effect, first observed in 1834.
Major advances in thermoelectrics, however, did not come until the 1950s;
advances in thermoelectric materials became possible following burgeoning
research into semiconductors, since these materials share many of the
same characteristics. Lack of significant advances in efficiency of thermoelectric
devices led to a cutback in basic research in thermoelectrics in the
mid-1960s and a stagnation until the early 1990s, when new research jump-started
the field.
About the same time, the
curiosity of Raymond Marlow, the founder of Marlow Industries, was piqued
by customers asking why the efficiency of thermoelectric materials seemed
to have reached a limit. He and his researchers wanted to improve their
theoretical understanding of the problem and renew the search for materials
that might break this barrier.
This led Marlow to hire
Hylan Lyon, a chemist by training, to set up a research program to tackle
these issues. Before Lyon was hired in 1993, Marlow Industries had no
research on thermoelectrics to speak of. It was a specialty manufacturer
of thermoelectric devices and its strengths were engineering and manufacturing;
it was then, as it is now, the leading supplier of thermoelectric devices
in the world.
Lyon started the research
program with a focus on developing new materials with a higher “figure
of merit” (a measure of the efficiency of the device that can be
built using this material). There were a number of directions the research
program could have gone at that point, and Lyon’s choice was to
explore a number of options simultaneously. The firm now has a unique
proprietary position in a number of areas. New materials developed by
Marlow are generating earnings and the firm is in the position to increase
its revenues significantly. Lyon also started looking at new manufacturing
processes and eventually the focus of his research and development including
production.
The firm started the research
program with its own funding to begin with. Marlow is in the fortunate
position of being a specialty manufacturer with higher margins than most
commodity manufacturers. It is privately held and has little debt and
thus could start the research with its own funds. It had a contract with
NASA to develop and improve refrigerators it was using in the space station
and other applications. While this did not force much of a shift in the
firm’s technology, the revenue stream from this contract allowed
the company to hire some researchers. Marlow applied successfully for
a number of SBIR grants at a number of agencies such as NASA and DARPA.
Overall, it obtained about eight Phase I grants in the range of $75,000–100,000
each. These grants were mostly of different but inter-related topics,
all little pieces of the overall development plan.
While it received very
good reviews and were recommended for Phase II on essentially all of
these grants, due to other factors (such as programmatic constraints
in the funding agencies or bureaucratic reasons) the company received
only three Phase II grants. Still, this amounted to a substantial level
of research funds. Marlow has also received funds from the DOE in the
form of research grants as well as a Cooperative Research and Development
Agreement (CRADA) through the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Marlow also
applied for two ATP grants, although these applications were unsuccessful.
The first time, says Lyon, it was told that its proposal was too risky
and the second time that it was not risky enough.
An important benefit of
raising money from competitive government programs was to increase the
credibility of the R&D team with the company’s senior management.
The fact that funding was obtained from government agencies in multiple
cases in a very competitive environment improved the team’s standing.
The share of the R&D that is funded internally has been steadily
increasing. In fact, Lyon is in the process of doubling its R&D budget,
the number of people, and the equipment budget.
Marlow also tried to raise
money by approaching as strategic partners those who would have the most
to gain if the firm succeeded, such as refrigerator manufacturers and
chip coolers. While these partners expressed interest, ultimately they
were unable to provide funding to Marlow. Conversations with venture
capitalists and family funds were also unsuccessful, in large part because
it was difficult for these entities to assess the risks associated with
this unusual technology.
One of the problems faced
by Marlow in the funds that it raised from agencies was the lead times
involved. One of the NASA programs had a 22-month gap from the time Marlow
bid to the time it got its first cash. In another case, an NSF Phase
II process went on for a year and half before a final decision was made.
In such cases, it would have been impossible to hold the team together
without internal resources. In many other SBIRs, though, there is only
a small lag between finding out that one has been awarded a grant and
being able to obtain funds from the agency.
An important strategy for
Marlow has been to fund external researchers on retainer. For example,
some researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) were about
to be laid off because of a short-term cash problem, so Marlow covered
their salaries for three months through a technology-associated agreement
to keep them there and assure the continued growth of the department.
This has resulted in a very fruitful partnership.
4.
POLYSTOR CORPORATION
PolyStor
Corporation, a privately held company based in Livermore,
California, designs, develops, and manufactures rechargeable
lithium-ion and lithium-ion polymer batteries for mobile devices
and portable electronic products. The firm was founded in 1993
to bring to the market technology that was developed by its founders
in the 1980s when they were at the Lawrence Livermore National
Labs (LLNL) and engaged in the development of lithium-ion (Li-ion)
technology for the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”)
defense program. After suffering a sharp decline for its products
in 2001, tied to a global decline in demand for cell phones,
PolyStor ceased operations in winter 2002.
PolyStor was the first
Li-ion battery producer in the United States and the first to use a nickel
cobalt oxide cathode that delivers the highest capacity and energy density
in the industry. Based on an exclusive license for technology developed
by Motorola, the firm also produced the world’s first commercially
available curved Li-ion polymer battery. In winter 2001 the firm employed
roughly 150 people, with a staff of 35 in research and development.
The founders of PolyStor
were interested in spinning out the technology in the early 1990s at
the end of the Cold War when government funding for military projects
such as the one they were engaged in was starting to go down. At the
same time, they had been able to develop some very successful cells and
had also applied for patents to protect this technology. Concerns about
conflicts of interest between inventors and commercial users were avoided
by spinning out PolyStor through a Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) Technology Reinvestment Project (TRP) grant in which LLNL
was also a participant. Commercial companies such as Rockwell were also
partners in this project.
This DARPA contract was
for development of an ultracapacitor. The Aerogel capacitor, which also
utilized technology developed by another group at LLNL, was one of the
firm’s early products. The research on this capacitor was related,
through the underlying chemistry, to the basic technology of the company’s
proprietary cells. For the first year, the company was funded by the
DARPA contract as well as by the founders’ own money. This was followed
by seed funding from a Korean firm that allowed the firm to build its
program further based on a successful demonstration of the company’s
battery. The development of the firm’s lithium-ion cell took about
two or three years after this point, and it took another year once the
cell had reached production to ensure that the product was safe and would
pass UL testing. It ultimately did and has been tested by Motorola and
other major manufacturers. By 1996, the firm was producing these lithium-ion
cells. At that time, though, PolyStor did not have its own manufacturing
capabilities—it made the components in the United States and then
shipped them to Korea for assembly.
Soon after, Polystor received
an SBIR grant from the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. This grant
allowed the firm to carry out further research on a cell with a nickel-cobalt
(Ni-Co) chemistry. Developing the Ni-Co chemistry was important for PolyStor’s
ability to access the market because it differentiated the company from
Japanese companies that were manufacturing cells with cobalt chemistries.
The Ni-Co cells also offered the advantages of higher energy density
and lower costs, although getting them to work right in production presented
significant technical hurdles.
About the same time PolyStor
received the SBIR grant from the BMDO, it also obtained funding from
a British company that allowed it to build its own plant in Livermore
for which it ordered high-volume, automated production lines from Sony
of Japan. The firm still needed to work out some issues relating to the
production of its cells for which it needed more resources; it experienced
a brief lapse in funding here. In 1998, the firm signed a contract with
the U.S. Army CECOM group for Li-ion batteries. The firm began mass production
in 1999 with its 8-millimeter-thick Li-ion prismatic cells.
The same year, it also
won a major $9.5 million grant from the United States Advanced Battery
Consortium (USABC), part of the government-industry Partnership for a
New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV). The technology that had been developed
by PolyStor worked very well for pure-electric or hybrid vehicles that
are driven by battery-powered motors. The larger cell developed by PolyStor
for these applications can deliver a high current (150 amperes) and using
a stack of cells (to get the right voltage) in a car will allow for improved
acceleration. PolyStor also won a grant in late 2000 from the National
Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Advanced Technology
Program (ATP) to help it to develop a safe, ultrahigh-capacity rechargeable
battery based on Li-ion polymer gel technology. The objective of this
grant was to allow PolyStor to develop the next generation of safe, ultra-light
batteries for the handheld rechargeable battery market.
Overall, government funding
played a central role in PolyStor’s formation and technology development
efforts. The firm might not have been started but for the DARPA funding.
The SBIR from the BMDO underpinned the research on the Ni-Co chemistry.
The firm would not have had the resources to develop the advanced car
batteries without PNGV funding—the development of these larger cells
at PolyStor was completely subsidized by the government funding. Most
of its venture funding was focused on meeting near-term financial goals,
ramping up production, and marketing. The government funds were also
helpful because these funds gave the company better leverage in negotiating
over other funding. Government contracts also were useful to PolyStor
because they allowed the firm to develop partnerships. Subcontractors
involved in Polystor’s ATP grant included groups at Argonne National
Laboratory, Entek International, and the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Date created: February
14, 2003
Last updated:
August 2, 2005
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