Already today, there are well over 1,000 consumer products on the market which, according to their manufacturers, are based in some way on nanotechnology. By the year 2015, market research experts forecast that the global market for these nano-optimized products will reach 3 trillion U.S. dollars. This is a staggering figure representing some 15 percent of the world’s production of goods.

“Nano” will be the prefix of the twenty-first century not only for technologists and economists but also for governments. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev exemplified this new thinking in a October 2009 speech: “I do not think that anyone can deny that in the coming years the development of nanotechnology will change the face of humanity, change our lives.”