BATTELLE FORECASTS TECHNOLOGY'S TOP 10
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR 2007

Construction ahead.

"The bridge to the 21st century is under construction, and the only way we're going to be able to build it quickly and correctly is if we understand the technological challenges ahead of us," says Stephen Millett, manager of Battelle's Breakthrough Center and leader of Battelle's technology forecasting. "If we ignore those challenges, then we'll likely end up in the river."

A team of top scientists and engineers at Battelle, a world renowned research and development organization based in Columbus, Ohio, have compiled a list of the 10 most important technological challenges facing industry over the next decade.

"These are market-driven challenges for industry, and anytime the marketplace challenges us, that's a tremendous opportunity for business growth and profitability," says Millett. "Global market forces are opening up these new opportunities, and they're driving the development of new technology and products."

The list completes a trilogy of Battelle forecasts for business opportunities in the next decade. Earlier forecasts focused on leading strategic technologies and innovative products.

"It's the combination of these three forecasts that gives us a clear picture of business opportunities for the next decade," says William Kopp, co-author of the forecast. "When a market opportunity meets up with a technological solution, then the result is often a new product or service that leads directly to business growth."

Battelle's list of the top 10 market-driven challenges for the next decade:

1. Affordable Home-Based Health Care. Market forces are shifting health care from hospitals and HMOs to private homes. Increasing home health care will help contain rising costs while serving an aging population and will provide people with the convenience and privacy of taking care of themselves and their loved ones in their own homes. Home health monitors and treatments and linkages to professional care centers present a huge challenge, and an enormous business opportunity, for the health care industry.

"We see a great need for simple, user-friendly medical equipment for the home," says Richard Rosen, Vice President of Battelle's Product Development Group. "And they'll have to be effective and affordable to be successful. Technology developments are already leading to those products."

2. Personalized Consumer Products. Many mass-produced products for mass markets will not be competitive in the 21st century. Consumers are increasingly better informed and harder to please. They will buy products that satisfy their own tastes rather than accept whatever stores present. Products in the future will have to be almost as varied as individual customers. This market driver will force companies to be even more consumer-driven in designing and marketing their products. It will also require the sensors, controls, and computers to achieve highly flexible manufacturing of customized products.

"The mass production of identical products is being replaced by the flexible production of individualized products," says Millett.

"Getting into the head of consumers - really understanding their motivations and behavior patterns rather than just their expressed desires - is the great challenge of consumer product development for the next decade. We see futuring as the way to anticipate customer demand and successful new products. All business leaders are going to have to be futurists."

3. Convergence of Technology in the Home. In the past, we separated our home life from work and from shopping. In the next 10 years, the home will be the place of convergence for private and public lives. Increasingly, the home will be a place for us to work, shop, get an education, and enjoy entertainment. But that does not mean that people will always stay at home.

We will continue to have offices and go to shopping malls, often for the social pleasures. We will have more choices to do what we want and when we want it. Our work lives and our home lives will be more efficient - and more closely linked.

The biggest technological change occurring in our personal lives will be the convergence of telecommunications, entertainment, networking, education information access, and computing power into the home. The technology challenge is how to empower and protect individuals in their own homes.

"The home environment is perhaps the center of the greatest opportunities for consumer products in the next 10 years," says William Burke, vice president of Battelle's Consumer Products Group. "The challenges involve new approaches to managing the total home environment with new products that will give residents better, simpler, and more personalized service."

4. Protecting the Environment and Natural Resources. Much of the economic growth of the Industrial Revolution was fueled by the easy exploitation of our rich natural resources. Those easily accessible resources are now largely tapped out, so further growth will come from the smart management of remaining resources and our ability to use alternatives. We need the technologies to provide for the long-term sustainability of our natural environment, including air and water.

Technology's environmental challenges will range from expanding and simplifying recycling programs to developing clean manufacturing processes. We will also have to find ways to increase the productivity of energy production and conversion.

5. Human Interfaces. Interfaces are the intermediaries between human and machine that allow us to more easily use technology - such as the software menu that gives us access to computer programs. The computer term "user friendly" describes a supposedly easy-to-use interface between the machine and the person.

As more complicated technology floods the home and the workplace, consumers will demand interfaces that go the next step beyond "user friendly." Tomorrow's successful technology-based products and services will be pleasing to our senses, more or less intuitively obvious, safe to use, and most of all, fun.

"More and more, the success of many products will be determined in large measure by how fun they are to use," says Kopp.

6. Nutritional Health. While people in the developed world are becoming more concerned about the nutritional quality of the foods they eat, the rapidly growing populations in many poor countries will simply need more food with high enough nutritional quality to sustain a healthy life.

Technologies are being developed now to engineer natural foods that will be packed with more vitamins, protein, other nutrients. Other foods will have higher yields, longer shelf life, and natural resistance to pests. Packaging techniques will also increase the shelf life of foods, allowing us to store them longer and transport them farther.

7. Mobile Energy. The automotive industry's needs for alternative mobile power sources are obvious. In 10 years, many more cars, though not a majority, will operate on alternative-fuel systems.

Further growth in electronics and information services will also require more efficient and mobile energy sources. People are becoming increasingly mobile in extended travel for business and pleasure. They want easy and rapid communications, which require highly mobile energy sources. Companies also need more flexible energy and power. Distributed electric generation is widely expected.

"We see great growth opportunities for packaged energy," says Henry Cialone, Vice President of Battelle's Energy Systems Group. "While there have been frustrations in the past, there are also reasons to expect exciting new developments in batteries, small power generators, and fuel cells over the next 10 years. We're seeing the convergence of technological advances and increasing economic incentives in the marketplace."

8. Micro-Security. The Cold War has died away, along with a great deal of the world's fear of nuclear holocaust; yet, in the wake of car-jackings, gang violence, and terrorist bombings in New York, Oklahoma City, and Atlanta, many people feel no safer than they did 10-15 years ago.

Technology's security challenge will shift from national security - protecting nations from invading armies or missiles - to personal and community security. We will develop technology-based methods to keep us protected from crime and terrorism.

"We won't be looking for 'Star Wars' satellites to protect us from nuclear missiles, but instead, we may want those satellites to show us exactly where our children are as they walk home from school," says Kopp.

9. The Renewed Infrastructure. In the developed countries, the public infrastructure that provides transportation, bridges, water, and sewage is deteriorating with age. Many developing countries are without advanced infrastructures. Costs of major projects today are huge. New materials and new construction methods will be required to renew the infrastructure with limited public funding.

New infrastructure needs will include new traffic control and management systems that could reduce travel times, and clean, safe, and practical mass transit systems.

10. Global Business Competition. Twenty years ago, the United States was by far the world's leader in technological entrepreneurship. Today, though, technology has become a global commodity - developed, traded, sold, and marketed in every corner of the world. Never has the world seen as much international trade and competition for global markets. This trend will continue.

To achieve business growth in this environment, companies will have to improve and expand their efforts at finding technology, acquiring it, and putting it to work around the world. They must use this new technology to improve efficiency, reduce waste and energy needs, and create new products and services.

"The great challenge will be to use technology for growth and profitability," Millett says. "Controlling technology will be the competitive edge of the future."

Battelle will conduct a workshop on the top 10 technology market drivers for 2007 on March 11, 9 a.m.-2:30 p.m., at Battelle's headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. Cost is $395. For information on the workshop, call 614.424.4244; fax 614.424.4260; or E-mail BTIP@battelle.org.

Battelle serves industry and government by developing, commercializing, and managing technology. With a wide range of scientific and technical capabilities, Battelle puts technology to work for clients in 30 countries.