Joe Sprengard, Jr., President & CEO, Co-Founder
How could something so cool, techy, and ‘cutting edge’ also be so frustrating, painfully slow to development, expensive, yet filled with optimism and possibilities?
Welcome to my experience with nanotechnology, and the story of how General Nano pivoted to become Veelo Technologies.
First, to be clear…I am not a ‘nano naysayer’. In fact, nearly 50% of Veelo’s products use nanotechnology to create differentiated capabilities for our customers. But, like many emerging technologies, nanotechnology has experienced the realities of the hype cycle. The hype cycle of emerging technologies, which is measured by expectations and time, involves multiple stages of “hype” before reaching commercialization. The hype cycle stages (see below) are real, frustrating, and difficult to navigate:
innovation triggers
peak of inflated expectations
trough of disillusionment
slope of enlightenment
plateau of productivity
General Nano needed to change. The hype cycle of nano was showing obvious signs of exhaustion as measured by investment capital, SBIR topics, and nanotech companies going out of business.
We refused to be that story, so we pivoted.
General Nano became Veelo Technologies when we solved an emerging problem in the fast growing aerospace and defense composites industry. Veelo, which was inspired by the work “velocity” (speed, with direction), developed VeeloVEIL, a new electrically conductive material to protect composite assets from emerging electromagnetic environmental (E^3) threats such as electromagnetic interference, directed energy, lightning strike protection, etc.
Within in 24 months of solving the problem a different way, VeeloVEIL® has matured from ideation into the lightest, most electrically conductive and electrically uniform advance material in the composite protection materials category for composite air vehicles.
I couldn’t be prouder of our innovative engineers and operations team. Delivering a new capability that is now in qualification to support some of our country’s most important weapon systems is 100% based on the team’s ability to capture key customer insight, be open to change, and relentlessly focus on what matter most…delivering capabilities that earn its way from onto production programs.
