(Business 2.0) – One of the least important things about nanotechnology is that it is small.

What is important is how nanotechnology can overturn assumptions about how things have to be done. Take manufacturing. Instead of parts and subassemblies, you start with building blocks like nanowires, nanotubes, and nanoparticles. Put together one way, these building blocks make a computer. Put together in a different way, they make a biological sensor.

Biology is a great analogy. You have a limited number of building blocks, like proteins and DNA. Depending on how you put them together, you end up with a tissue, a worm, or a human being. In the same way, nanotechnology lets you mix and match building blocks of materials in ways that are not possible in conventional manufacturing.

That very important change is difficult to get across to people in entrenched industries. They have to throw away what is ingrained in their soul.