Successful Companies Founded by Physicists Often Break the Silicon Valley Model

Science Focus

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For much of the 20th century, many of the technological innovations that drove U.S. economic growth emerged from “idea factories” housed within large companies — research units like Bell Labs or Xerox PARC that developed everything from the transistor to the computer mouse. In recent decades, however, many large high-tech companies have eliminated in-house research programs, turning instead to startup companies as their primary source of breakthrough innovations. “Small startups have replaced corporate research centers as the drivers of American innovation,” said Orville Butler, a former historian at the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and coauthor of a new AIP report on physics startups. The report, titled Physics Entrepreneurship and Innovation, is based on extensive interviews with 140 PhD physicists and other professionals who co-founded and work at some 91 startup companies in 14 states that were established in the last few decades. These companies are engaged in making medical devices, manufacturing tools, nanotechnology, lasers and optical devices, renewable energy technologies and other products. There is no one winning formula for a successful physics startup, said Joe Anderson, director of AIP’s Niels Bohr Library & Archives and co-author of the new report. Many physics startups can be found in the same Boston

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