Advancing photonics amidst geopolitical and economic uncertainty

Nov. 4, 2024
The Global Photonics Economic Forum provided a space for industry leaders to identify areas of difficulty and possibility ahead. My conclusion? Even amidst the challenges we face, the future of photonics is bright.

As we work toward the future of the photonics industry, we face navigating economic, geopolitical, and environmental challenges, which impact businesses on an everyday level. From supply chain issues to global collaboration, photonics companies are seeking solutions to navigate the current landscape, address shifting priorities and needs, and preparing for the future within a highly volatile environment.

For these reasons, in early October 2024, Optica convened more than 300 leaders from the global photonics industry for the inaugural Global Photonics Economic Forum. This pivotal event focused on facilitating meaningful discussions to shape the future of photonics.

Scaling for tomorrow

As I previously shared, we are in a new season for photonics. Industry predictions reveal the global photonics market will be worth $1.2 trillion Euros ($1.3B) by 2027. But how do these growth expectations translate to the individual business level? Businesses need to maintain a primary focus on scalability, according to the CEO panel at the event.

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The panel was moderated by Michael Lebby, CEO of Lightwave Logic, and featured Matt Crowley, EVP of Jabil, John T.C. Lee, president and CEO of MKS Instruments, Chuck Mattera, former chair and CEO of Coherent, and Thorsten Mayer, CEO of Vanguard Automation (recently acquired by Mycronic). It focused on ways in which the landscape must continue to evolve to meet demand. All comments pointed to scale as the factor driving the evolution of the photonics value chain during the next five to 10 years.

“Fifty years ago, people who made telephones needed somebody to make the chips and they needed somebody to make the equipment to make the chips. You couldn't buy equipment or chips from anybody else, so you did it yourself,” reflected Lee. “As industries scale in general, if they scale efficiently, people start specializing and you start getting stratification…it's not a prediction, just an observation of history, and history tends to repeat itself.”

“The future of photonics, particularly silicon photonics, is heavily dependent on getting to scale,” Crowley said. “The demands of the marketplace today require that scale, so the faster we figure out how to support it will help determine the trajectory and timing of photonics adoption in general.”

Global impacts

A big driver of scalability lies within the supply chain and the ability to conduct global business operations. First, the pandemic drove widespread supply issues. Now, photonics companies are contending with a geopolitical environment that constrains business operations.

To address some of these concerns, the Global Economic Forum introduced a panel focused on business with China, which was moderated by Christoph Pfistner, VP of Avicena Tech, and included Huiyao Wang, founder and president of CCG, Michael Hochberg, CEO of Periplous, and Rodger Baker, executive director of Stratfor Center for Applied Geopolitics.

Unsurprisingly, the debate sparked a lot of discussion and audience interactions, with no silver bullet, singular solution to the challenges that exist today and those ahead.

“It’s something we need to think deeply about, because as we heard on the CEO panel yesterday getting to scale is critical in this industry,” said Hochberg. “If you need to get to scale within a fragmented world, it's another layer of complexity. If you can't think about it as one big world market because you need to think about it as a set of smaller regulatory domains that aren’t flat, getting to scale in that world is super interesting, complex, and dynamic.”

In terms of practical advice, panelists encouraged photonics businesses to plan for scenarios around varying potential future states to help them identify strategies in a proactive way that can be used if necessary. Photonics businesses should also explore ways to structure their operations and activities to support alignment with needs.

Baker pointed out he’s witnessed other industries grappling with the same issues: “We're seeing a couple of solutions coming. One is literally separating business operations by regulatory environment and building semi-walls between them and only having minimal connectivity,” he said. “Another piece of it is to look and see where dynamics are going to break down and to make it easier to cross over into some of these spaces. Another within the U.S. is to really watch what the Department of Defense is doing and try to tag along.”

It’s a complex issue for a complex time, but by considering these ideas as part of business planning photonics companies can better prepare for what’s next.

“Basically, assume you understand the environment you're operating within,” Pfistner said.

Heading into a photonics future

The Global Photonics Economic Forum provided a backdrop for industry leaders to come together and address areas of difficulty and those of possibility. What resulted was clarity that even amidst the challenges we face, the future of photonics is bright.

As I told my four-year-old daughter, photonics is the way we can bring light into every corner of the world and help people have healthy, long, and prosperous lives. With this industry’s passion and commitment, the discussions we had at the Global Photonics Economic Forum will ensure this vision becomes reality.

About the Author

Jose Pozo | Chief Technology Officer, Optica

Jose Pozo joined Optica in March 2022, and has spent more than 25 years working in photonics. He earned a PhD in quantum physics from the University of Bristol (U.K.), and an M.Sc. and B.Eng. in telecom engineering from UPNA, Spain / VUB (Belgium). Prior to joining the European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC) in 2015 as CTO, Jose was a Senior Photonics Technology Consultant with PNO Consultants, with some of the main accounts such as CERN, Thales, and TE Connectivity. He has worked at TNO, The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research, and as a postdoctoral researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, where he contributed to the early development of EFFECT Photonics.

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