This Week in Charts 5-26-22
This edition of This Week in Charts was presented in a LIVE episode by Griffin Review technology analyst Grant Coultrup.
Our data this week comes from market reports by McKinsey & Company and from publications on 3D Print dot com. Hyperlinks to the sources can be found throughout the article, and our topics are as follows:
Areas of growth for organizations in women’s health;
A look at where the funding for modern clinical trials is coming from;
How vehicle manufacturers are changing their portfolios;
Powerful players in the semiconductor industry;
A consensus about the “flexible workspace” and work-life balance;
A look at global disease through an economic lens;
and keys to retaining design talent.
In 3D printing news we’ll look at some of this year’s award recipients of the 3D Pioneers Challenge, an honor given to some of the best, most innovative, and breakthrough projects in 3D printing. Categories include MedTech, design, architecture, mobility, sustainability, and more.
With that, let’s get right into the data.
Corporate Charts
FemTech Opportunities
FemTech companies typically build largely tech-enabled, consumer-centric solutions addressing women’s health. The top half of this chart displays types of services, and the bottom half addresses products and devices. The darker the box, the more startups exist to provide service or products for that specific need. While startups in the space are proliferating, there remains opportunity for innovation in services and support of menstrual health, menopause, and contraception as well as new products and devices.
Clinical Trial Funding
In 2020, about 70% of new clinical trials were sponsored by smaller pharma companies, up from roughly 60% in 2016. This is due to “unprecedented levels” of a couple of growth tools: venture capital investment coupled with greater availability and growth of outsourcing paved the way for smaller companies to pursue innovation.
Automotive Portfolios
The automotive industry has shifted its focus toward “ACES” initiatives: autonomous driving, connected cars, electric vehicles, and shared mobility. A study with the European Association of Automotive Suppliers revealed that 90% of suppliers are reshaping their portfolio mix to focus on technology-driven components while de-emphasizing hardware. To me, this presents two needs: first is what appears to be an outsourcing of those sunset commodities, an opportunity that the additive manufacturing community could fill only too easily. The second is the stress which is to be applied to semiconductor manufacturers by automakers. We’re already in the middle of a chip shortage; this will only keep pressure applied.
Chip Manufacturing
Speaking of chip manufacturers, our next chart dives into just that. With demand continuing to outstrip supply, powerful growth is possible for all semiconductor companies regardless of size. First, we’ll examine organizations ranked by revenue across the x-axis: the largest are on the right side of the chart. High performers are ranked by operating margin on the y-axis. Obviously, the trend indicates that larger organizations are also better performing organizations, but let’s not ignore the great number of small organizations with margins above average.
The Flexible Workplace
Organizations are still figuring out the best ways to make flexible workplace models meet the needs of the workers, but some benefits are beginning to emerge. This chart displays the responses when employees were polled about the success of workplace inclusion practices. Across the board, success was indicated more often than not for each work-life support, team building, and mutual respect.
Global Disease Choke Points
When viewed from a societal perspective, musculoskeletal, mental health, and neurological disorders combined to drive the largest burden on healthcare providers. On the left of the chart is the burden of many disease types, with units in disability-adjusted life years in the million; essentially, how many years are lost due to ill-health, disability, or early death as a result of a specific disease. At right is the economic burden of reducing the burden of those diseases by 2040, with units in trillions of US dollars. Those three: musculoskeletal, mental, and neurological disorders represent a significant deficit in workforce capability as they are the ones which workers cite as reasons for absence or receipt of disability payment, becoming net dependents rather than contributors. Essentially healthy people lead to healthy economies, but targeting these areas specifically could have a powerful economic impact.
Design Talent Retention
Designers tend to stick around when they’re embedded in collaborative teams. Our research shows that cross-functional design integration very often helps companies attract, cultivate, and retain talent… an important consideration in a time when so many people are leaving their job in search of other opportunities. At left is a representation of organizations ranked poor, average, and excellent, and their abilities to fill design vacancies within one quarter. Those with poor integration filled less than 20%, while those with excellent marks filled most of their roles within the 3-month time frame. The chart at right demonstrates those same organizations’ share of talent which stuck around for more than 5 years. Again, those with poor cross-functional design integration saw a majority of their designers leaving. Excellent integration saw great success with retention.
Before we move on, I want to discuss what is cross-functional design integration? This stems from the organizational structure’s priority of designer input. Increasingly, designers are contributing to organizational success not just in their realm of product or service design, but in their contributions to the organizational structure itself or the operating systems therein. Giving designers a more holistic grasp of the organization leads to better design of the product or service as well as better operating systems.
3D Print News
With that, let’s transition to the news in the world of 3D printing. Our conversation today rotates around the 3D Pioneers Challenge awards, a recognition bestowed upon some of the most unique and useful inventions in the additive manufacturing field.
Hyperloop Brakes
Of course, the hyperloop is still a bit of a marketing dream/engineering nightmare at the moment, but who knows, maybe someday it becomes a reality. When that day comes it will need brakes, and that’s just what a team at ETH Zurich and Inspire AG created: a compact, 3D printed brake that still works in case of power failure. The project describes the operation in detail, and the science checks out. All the intricacy is done inside one single component, generously showing off 3D printing’s ability to make a complex integrated part with a single machine.
Sustainability and Architecture
Next is the World’s Advanced Saving Project, or WASP, which won both the sustainability and architecture categories with a pair of projects. The TECLA habitat was a sustainability monument, combining earth, clay, and modern techniques to manufacture homes with digital clay furniture and open space design. The huge Crane WASP 3D printer was put to the test and performed admirably.
In their architectural masterpiece, WASP fabricated a pair of concept stores for fashion brand Dior in Dubai. The project incorporated the signature Dior cannage motif on the walls, resembling the natural weaved threads on a line of handbags. I don’t know about you, but WASP is the kind of organization I would gladly work for.
Electronics
The electronics winner was from the United Kingdom's Manufacturing Technology Centre, or MTC, as they redesigned and 3D printed a high-power density electronic motor. The team reduced mass by 65% and eliminated most other parts by combining them into one. The jury noted that the team did excellent work leveraging the advantages of additive manufacturing to redesign and reproduce this product.
Medtech
In Medtech, the winner was a multi-axis robot used as a bioprinter, created by a group of universities too numerous to name here. Now, a multi-axis bioprinter is certainly not a new concept, but this new project prints inside an oil bath which should preserve any tissue. It also utilizes a platform that can fabricate using several robots at once. The machine can print /quote/ “vascularized, contractible, and long-term survived cardiac tissues.” No surprises here that they were the Medtech awardee.
Thats all our 3D printing news and this brings an end to our data today. If you found any of the information interesting, drop a comment here or join the conversation on my discord.
~ fin ~
