Instrument Research, Tools, and the Knowledge Enterprise 1999-2009

Abstract

This article retraces the trajectory of a start-up company NanoInk Inc. and its primary technology, the Dip-Pen, which it researches, manufactures, and commercializes. The case is of interest because it introduces a series of under elucidated questions concerning the relationships between “instrument” and “tool,” the birth of a new category of company, the “knowledge enterprise,” the dynamics of relations between complexity and simplicity related to tools “simplexity,” and the idea of “nanofication,” which refers to the spread of familiarity of a nano-permeated future throughout society.