The public release this month of a report on nanomanufacturing by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) has stirred up media interest in the “missing middle” by putting the spotlight on an investment gap in manufacturing development that can leave discoveries stranded between the lab and the market.

“The term missing middle has been used to refer to the lack of funding/investment that can occur with respect to manufacturing innovation – that is, maturing manufacturing capabilities and processes to produce technologies at scale.”
GAO-14-181SP Forum on Nanomanufacturing

Funding/Investment Gap in the Manufacturing-Innovation Process. Credit: GAO

• Nanomanufacturing in America: Small but imperfectly formed (The Economist)
• ‘Valley of Death’, ‘Manufacturing Middle’, and other concerns in new government report about the future of nanomanufacturing in the US (Frogheart)
• US Government Accountability Office finds flaws in nation’s approach to nanotechnology manufacturing (Nanowerk)

Promoting translation
Despite the somewhat downbeat headlines, the report is not all doom and gloom and highlights The NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center (NERC) for Nanomanufacturing Systems for Mobile Computing and Mobile Energy Technologies (NASCENT) and The College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) as examples of “ecosystems or infrastructures [that] create the conditions for innovators to more successfully traverse the Valley of Death and the Missing Middle.”

To view a summary of the report and for links to the PDF visit – www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-181SP