2014年8月28日

打印，我在前面。麻省理工学院是世界上最好的大学之一。许多毕业生对科学做出了持久的贡献。我最接近麻省理工家庭的一员可能是在校园书店当库存员。它是学术的灯塔。但有时候，初创企业并不是它的囊中之物。利力浦特系统公司(Lilliputian Systems)宣布破产，该公司是麻省理工学院(MIT)的分支机构，在其鼎盛时期筹集了超过1.4亿美元，用于将便携式燃料电池推向市场。这是这所名校一系列资金雄厚的公司中的最新一家。为了将尖端理念推向市场，这所大学已经烧了数千万美元。许多人从事清洁技术。名单上还包括A123 Systems，该公司筹集了超过2亿美元，甚至在将零部件出售给中国投资者之前完成了IPO; GreenFuel Technologies, which burned through millions proving that algae fuel is a lot harder than it looks; Luminus Devices , an innovative LED company that raised over $150 million to get sold for $22 million; and Evergreen Solar founded by former professor Ely Sachs. Evergreen And look, I got through that whole article without mentioning One Laptop Per Child . Amazing. The problem? Most of these companies were way ahead of the market and by the time they were mature the market had passed them by. The science was great, but the process of bringing them to market was arduous. Take for example Sun Catalytix, a company founded by professor Daniel Nocera to produce hydrogen with sunlight. Producing hydrogen cleanly is one of the primary roadblocks to the hydrogen economy. Most companies produce it by cracking carbon dioxide. Sun Catalytix was working on a catalyst that would effectively split water efficiently. It’s an incredibly challenging scientific problem. After a few rounds of funding, the company suddenly switched courses and announced it would make flow batteries, which have absolutely nothing to do hydrogen or the original catalyst. While Sun Catalytix only raised a few million — nothing on the scale of Lilliputian — it recently got sold to Lockheed Martin. Or take E-Ink. Spun out of MIT Media Labs, E-Ink created a digital form of paper. Great idea. The downside? It came up with the idea in 1997, about seven years too early. E-Ink ultimately prevailed. It got bought by a Taiwanese company for $215 million for 2009 , more than the over $150 million it raised, but you can imagine the timeline didn’t endear it to investors. Or look at Evergreen. The company’s string ribbon technology promised to dramatically reduce the cost of solar wafer manufacturing. And it did. Unfortunately, Evergreen’s wafers were square . The industry standard was round. It was literally like trying to shove a square peg into a round hole: manufacturers would have had to retrofit substantial portions of their production lines to adopt it. Evergreen did OK when demand outstripped supply, but when the market slowed a bit, it headed toward bankruptcy. It blamed China for its problems, but its IP got bought by Chinese investors. Sachs is also the founder of 1366 Technologies, which makes ultra-thin cutting edge multicrystalline silicon wafers. In general, multicrystalline wafers result in solar cells that aren’t as efficient as monocrystalline wafers and efficiency is becoming increasingly important. Just saying. Lilliputian tried to mass produce portable fuel cells so people could recharge phones and other devices on the go. Fuel cells are incredibly complex and prone to failure over the long haul. Lilliputian had to invest millions into R&D. Unfortunately, the whole purpose of its existence was eliminated when Samsung started planting free charging towers in airports. Why carry around an expensive vial of flammable liquids when you can just plug in? Not every wacky idea that left a smoking crater in the ground came out of MIT. Konarka Technologies , which promised to produce flexible solar cells, came out of the University of Massachusetts for instance. The information and views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author and not necessarily those of RenewableEnergyWorld.com or the companies that advertise on this Web site and other publications. This blog was posted directly by the author and was not reviewed for accuracy, spelling or grammar.