DISRUPTIVE / INNOVATION & SCIENCE
Department · Lab to market
Innovation: the hard middle between a breakthrough and a business.
Technology transfer, spinouts, and the commercialization of research — a worldwide story. This desk follows ideas out of labs across Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East and into the market — and keeps research and deployment strictly separate along the way. Research itself lives on the Science desk.
Imogen Hart, Correspondent — science & research
The assignment — what each desk covers, and who covers it.
The desks
The assignment.
Innovation
From lab to market: technology transfer, spinouts, and the hard middle between a breakthrough and a business.
Imogen Hart, Correspondent — science & research
Energy & Climate Technology
Storage, generation, industrial decarbonization. Physics first, then economics, then claims.
Imogen Hart, Correspondent — science & research
From the desk
The latest stories.
Stories from this desk — newest first.
Innovation · Evergreen · Global · the battery
Three Scientists, One Battery: The Forty-Year Relay Behind Lithium-Ion
An oil company's lab, an Oxford professorship, and a Japanese chemical firm passed a single idea between them for two decades. In 2019 it won the Nobel Prize — and it now powers the world.
Innovation · Evergreen · Global · orbit
The Military System That Became the World's Clock: How GPS Ate Everything
Built to guide weapons, opened to civilians after a tragedy, unleashed by a single policy decision in May 2000 — GPS is now load-bearing infrastructure for nearly every industry on Earth.
Innovation · Retrospective · Europe · Paris, France
The Paris Agreement at Ten: A Decade of the World’s Climate Constitution
Adopted in December 2015, in force since November 2016, the Paris Agreement rebuilt global climate diplomacy around pledges instead of punishments. Ten years on, the design is the story.
Innovation · News · North America · United States
Washington’s $350 Million Quantum Wager: From Blueprints to Hardware
DARPA advanced four more companies to the final stage of its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, while the Pentagon lined up a conditional $150 million loan for PsiQuantum’s factory.
DISRUPTIVE WEEKLY
The week in innovation, curated — never firehosed.
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