it's not just capital intensive -- it's hugely time-intensive. i work for a nanotech company that has been trying to scale up its proprietary process in some fo

it's not just capital intensive -- it's hugely time-intensive. i work for a nanotech company that has been trying to scale up its proprietary process in some form or another for 16 years. if i'm quick, i can run maybe a dozen experiments in a day and get results back on 5 of them by the morning. i also do some work with a company that does plasma coatings, also with a proprietary process that the owner (co-)invented. and it's a 4 person shop right now. both people have done very smart work and made processes that have many compelling advantages over the existing state-of-the-art, with cost being a huge one, but it just takes a long-ass time to iterate and get good results from real, physical tests.