This article is a simplified and revised transcript of the presentation given by Jean-Marie Tarascon, professor at the Collège de France and holder of the Chair in Chemistry of Materials and Energy, at the symposium “ The Future: How Long Must We Wait? ” on May 10, 2022. He examines the dynamics at work behind technological innovations. The video of the presentation can be found at the end of this text.
“It is a great pleasure for me to speak at this symposium, ‘The Future: How Long Must We Wait?,’ and I would like to thank my colleague Dario Mantovani for his invitation. He has thus given me the opportunity to address a subject as vast and complex as the maturation of new technologies. For this talk, I will draw inspiration from the lectures given at the Collège de France by Didier Roux , who held the Technological Innovation Liliane Bettencourt Annual Chair during the 2016–2017 academic year.
If we look at all the objects around us—whether smartphones, television screens, or microprocessors—we must realize that these inventions incorporate the discoveries of at least 20 Nobel laureates. The message I’d like to convey here is that without basic research, there would be no technological innovation.
However, when we talk about innovation, what exactly are we talking about? To understand this, we need to connect it to other concepts. First, there is “discovery,” which is fundamental science, knowledge, and the repository of knowledge. Ultimately, this is what we uncover when we explain how the world works and how human beings function. “Invention,” next, involves taking advantage of this knowledge to create something—a device—that did not previously exist and that works. Finally, “innovation” is an invention that finds a market and is available for purchase. In short, basic research enables inventions, and when these inventions capture the market, we speak of innovation and, consequently, new technologies.
However, the path from knowledge to a new technology is often winding, not linear, requiring knowledge that extends far beyond the initial field of research. Generally speaking, an innovation results from the convergence of a market and knowledge. Both must align for the innovation to emerge.
Creating the Need
Let’s take the example of the transistor, which illustrates this dynamic: this invention was indeed born out of market demand. In the 1940s, Bell Labs—the founding father of the telephone—wanted to roll out the telephone across the United States. The technology was not yet ready. At the time, they were using vacuum tubes to process the signal. Unfortunately, the cost of deploying this solution made it unfeasible. Furthermore, in practice, this solution proved unreliable. It was then that a physicist, Mervin Kelly, who had taken the helm at Bell Labs, became convinced that the solution lay in semiconductor physics. So what did he do? He simply assembled a team of experts in physics and chemistry, leading to the invention of the transistor in 1947. John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley—three scientists on the team—even received a Nobel Prize in 1956 for this invention, and Bardeen went on to receive the prize a second time in 1972 for his work on superconductivity. The time between when the market was identified and when the solution was developed was very short—just five years. Why? Because there had already been 20 to 30 years of basic research leading up to it. There is no doubt that if the market had been identified earlier, the transistor could have been discovered much sooner.
A second example, still in the field of communications and once again from Bell Labs, where I had the privilege of working, concerns optical fibers and, more specifically, erbium-based optical amplifiers. Because the amplitude of the optical wave is attenuated by the waveguide—that is, the optical fibers—we could not envisage long-distance connections, such as between Europe and the United States. We had to find a way to boost the signal along the entire route. This technical challenge, first identified in 1982, was solved seven years later with the development of erbium-based optical amplifiers. As a result, since 1990, submarine optical cables have carried virtually all intercontinental traffic due to their performance in terms of data rates and quality of service, revolutionizing the way we exchange information and communicate.
You can also see even faster “breakthroughs,” such as the one you’re all familiar with that astonished the world: the COVID-19 vaccine. In this case, researchers were able to develop the vaccine in just one year—a truly remarkable achievement. And here, once again, this was only possible thanks to 50 years of basic research. Furthermore, given the public health crisis, market demand for a vaccine solution was very high.
I’ll now consider the case where the market wasn’t defined, but the technology already existed. These are the cases of the personal computer and the cell phone—two things we take for granted today. Yet 40 years ago, when you presented the concept of the personal computer to people, no one was interested. The computer was nothing more than a calculator for the military, industry, and academia. The same was true for the telephone. At the time, it was meant solely to connect point A to point B. No one saw the point of being reachable at any time, anywhere—even far from a landline. It was Steve Jobs who had the vision for the personal computer. He was able to bring it to life relatively quickly by using existing technology derived from Xerox. As for the phone, Nokia benefited from technology that had already been developed in the 1940s in New York. The model in question was certainly less advanced than what we have today, but it had the advantage of already being fully developed. The genius of Apple and Nokia in this case, if I may say so, lay in having created markets tailored to their products.
With the following examples, I will attempt to illustrate my point with personal experiences related to the field of batteries, such as the development of the plastic battery, the Na-ion battery, and the smart battery. All these examples differ in terms of the scientific and financial context that enabled these technologies to emerge. I will contrast the development of the plastic battery—fully funded by an industrial partner (Bellcore)—with Na-ion technology, which was developed in an academic setting. Both cases, however, benefited from the support of knowledge platforms specific to batteries. The final example of smart batteries will serve to reinforce my point regarding the nonlinear relationship between innovation and basic research. Here, innovation draws on a variety of knowledge silos that extend far beyond the field of batteries (optics, instrumentation, etc.). Nevertheless, in all these experiences, the key to success has been the sharing of ideas and personal enthusiasm—all with the aim of creating a team steeped in excellence and rich in diverse talents.
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Improving Synergy Between the Public and Private Sectors
To conclude, I’d like to try to answer the question that concerns us all: how can we accelerate technological progress? I believe that such progress will now be made possible by governments and the European Union by taking on the risk, rather than by private companies, which have become increasingly cautious when it comes to exploring new fields. This is regrettable, because in the past, it was private companies (ATT, IBM, Toyota, and others) that were behind major breakthroughs. At the national level, however, it remains to be seen whether we will be able to compete with China in terms of execution time.
Today, we cannot fault Europe and its member states for not taking a stand on various projects, such as those focused on quantum computers (QUANTUM) or the batteries of the future (BATTERY2030+). These projects bring together academics and industry representatives. Unfortunately, most of the time, these academic research projects aimed at technological breakthroughs remain counterproductive because certain industry players are there more to gather information than to actually make a contribution. How can we change this?
We need to strengthen the synergy between the public and private sectors. We must ensure that scientific knowledge interacts closely with technological expertise. We should also, within our European framework of thought, place greater value on engineering, which is much more highly valued in the United States. In France, we have no equivalent to MIT, for example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Finally, let’s avoid excessive paranoia about confidentiality, which paralyzes any development of healthy relationships between academics and industry.”
