The Japan Times WORLD EYE REPORTS GERMANY'S RHINE-MAIN REGION
©THE JAPAN TIMES	Thursday, October 25, 2001

More than the sum of its parts It's the story every entrepreneur wants to tell but few can call their own - taking an idea and turning it into a symbol of superior technology years later. In 1984, one man thought he had had enough of not being able to realize his own ideas. Norbert Nold took that moment and turned it into Omicron.

Inspiration and entrepreneurial flair led Norbert Nold to start Omicron.

Omicron's success lies in the market niche it has carved out for itself. It all started after two men had won the Nobel Prize for pioneering Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM), making possible the study of the basic building blocks of matter - atoms. Some years earlier, the technology for identifying chemical compositions through electron microscopy had also become available. Omicron's concept was born when Nold, now the company's managing director, came up with the idea to bring together the two techniques to develop combined Surface Science/SPM systems for nanotechnology.

In 1984, the applications for such an idea were not easily conceived.

Seventeen years later, Omicron grows steadily at 20 percent a year and the practical uses of the idea are apparent. Omicron's products are key tools for fundamental research, while Japanese companies such as Hitachi, NTT, and Sony use them for in-house materials research.

As a result, of offering two important functions within one system, Omicron commands 80 percent of its worldwide market.

The company is science-oriented in every sense of the word. "We are a scientific company," Nold declares and his employee selection is based on specialization within each technique. All problems and solutions are taken care of in-house.

Such a corporate vision also called for someone more than just a scientist - it called for entrepreneurial flair as well. This combination of aptitudes embodied in Nold, which led to the company's formation, remains a vital force in its growth today. The president has no plans to move on - he stays focused on overseeing his vision to insure that Omicron remains independent and innovative.

Omicron's scanning probe's ability to observe surfaces on the atomic level has led electronics experts to study the possibility of recording information on an atomic scale - which would be the most powerful information compression imaginable.