Executive Summary Small scale technologies are already having a significant economic and social impact. Over the next two decades they will have profound effects on industrial products and processes, on the lives of individuals and on the nature of human society. As the next major wave of global technological change, they offer vast potential benefits but carry serious economic, social and ethical risks. It is important that Victoria acts now to share in the potential benefits of small scale technologies and to understand and respond to the risks involved. We use the phrase 'small scale technologies' to refer to technologies with feature sizes less than 1000 nanometers, where a nanometer is one millionth of a millimetre. In other words, they are technologies with feature sizes less than one thousandth of a millimetre. The term thus covers both micro technologies, operating down to about 100 nanometers, and nano technologies, operating at or about the nanometer scale. Technologies at both levels are already being used in industry, often in combination with one another. Micro technologies are currently much more important in industrial applications. But those at the nano scale will become increasingly dominant in a wide variety of industries over the next two decades. They will also have the most dramatic implications, as new properties of matter emerge at the very small scale. These facts have been recognised by governments around the world, and support programs amounting to some US$3 billion are in place in 2003. S ubstantial commitments have been made by a number of countries in East Asia as well as in North America and Europe, and this is the first technological revolution in which Asian countries have been participants at a foundational stage. Much of this support has been in terms of basic science, and in particular in the scientific foundations of nano technologies. This report examines the implications of small scale technologies for industries and firms in Victoria, in the context of the broader drivers of change in those industries. It shows that these technologies will have a pervasive impact on the competitive position of Victorian firms in a wide range of industries, from health and food to transport, energy and the environmental industries. There is little doubt that developing high-level capability in small scale technologies will become increasingly central to the competitiveness of many industries over the next decade, and indeed to the survival of many firms. …