Technology and market perspective for future Value Added Materials

to give their opinion about investing in
projects related to materials. Therefore the
ICT sector is underestimated in our hypothetical
allocations exercise, although
some investors define semi-conductors,
micro- and nano-electronics and the like as
‘ICT hardware’.
The specificity of the investments is also
important for this study. Interviewees
claimed that this type of investment in
highly risky ideas is mostly addressed by
private investors — venture capital funds
and private equity business. Banks do not
tend to operate within this kind of highly
demanding and risky market. Stock market
investors will also be far from this kind of
investments since by definition such actors
may invest only in companies already established
on the stock market with a proper
public securities structure. Investors
interviewed also indicated another important
player for the development of
research: large industry actors with their
own research facilities, agendas and budgets.
A different set of interviews conducted
simultaneously with materials experts
representing research centres of such
larger companies was not included in the
results above, since this group was purely
oriented in research within their industry
(such as automotive, construction materials,
etc.) and did not have an overview of
the investment market trends.
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