::The Center for Paper Business and Industry Studies::

CPBIS News

TechnoBusiness Forum for the Forest Products Industry will feature E. Clayton Teague, Director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office for NSF

A key participant in the upcoming September 19 and 20, 2005, TechnoBusiness Forum (co-hosted by the Center for Paper Business and Industry Studies - CPBIS - and the Institute of Paper Science and Technology - IPST) to be held at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA is Dr. E. Clayton Teague, Director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO). This office serves as the secretariat for the National Science and Technology Council's Nanoscale Science, Engineering, and Technology Subcommittee that coordinates Federal government efforts in the area of nanoscale science and technology. The goal of the National Nanotechnology Initiative is to fully realize the promise of nanotechnology and translate that promise into improvements in the national economy, national security, and the quality of life while protecting the public health and the environment. Dr. Teague will participate in both a leading edge panel session on nanotechnology and deliver the keynote on Day Two of the TechnoBusiness Forum.

TechnoBusiness -- The term implies a bond between technology and business -- an interdependence that drives both to achieve more together than separately . This term is well suited to the forest products industry, where research and innovation have driven process improvement and new product development for decades - but not necessarily as value enhancing as possible or as needed. The 2005 Forum program is designed around a theme that embraces Open Innovation and Enhanced Platforms for Innovation and how they collectively relate to Enterprise Transformation that will generate value enhancing operating and organization performance improvements now and across time.

Attendees will participate in open forum discussion panels organized to highlight the need for and issues around pursuing an open innovation approach to tomorrow's key industry developmental and improved performance issues. One core discussion panel -- to be led by Dr. Phil Jones of Imerys and on which Dr. Teague will participate -- will focus on the role of open innovation in the development of nanotechnology and how this evolutionary advancement can help sustain and grow the forest products industry in terms of both scope and enhanced performance.

Dr. Jones offers -- " Clayton Teague is intimately involved in open innovation across US industry and government sponsored R&D, with a focus on nanotechnology. His key role is in connecting up the diverse range of activities and enables the adoption of Nanotechnology by industry. We are honored to have Dr. Teague participate in our Forum and focus his expertise on the forest products industry ".

Dr. Teague adds -- " Nanotechnology is not just the study of small things. Nanoscale research and development is the study of materials, devices, and systems that exhibit physical and chemical properties quite different from those found in larger scale systems. As a scientist who has worked for over twenty-five years in some of the fields now included in nanotechnology, I would like to offer my perspective, through this Forum, on how this technology is developing and offer perspectives on how this technology relates to the forest products industry ".

Dr. Jim McNutt, Executive Director of the Center for Paper Business and Industry Studies (CPBIS), notes -- " The emergence of new technologies, such as nanotechnology, will help transform the essence of the forest products industry enterprises if our industry can embrace a working process to develop and implement such technologies in a timely, substantive and economical fashion. The adoption of an open innovation type platform has the true process potential to help our industry remain both a social and economical force in today's fast changing world. "

For more information on the Forum, please visit http://www.ipst.gatech.edu , or http://www.cpbis.gatech.edu/connect/forumslectures/technobus05/index.htm .