In an exclusive interaction with Adlin Pertishya Jebaraj, Correspondent at Finance Outlook, Amarjeet Singh Tak, Head – Research and Microscopy Solutions, ZEISS India shares how advanced microscopy is transforming into a strategic innovation and industrial competitiveness as well as economic growth force. He describes how scientific infrastructure and ecosystems between academia and industry need to be invested in to further speed up breakthroughs in areas like semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and advanced materials.

Having more than 16 years of experience in the med-tech and scientific instrumentation works, he focuses on leading innovative work in life sciences, materials research, and the manufacturing of advanced solutions. He collaborates with research facilities, colleges and business associates in order to expedite the uptake of high-order imaging and digital processes.

How can national investments in research infrastructure and innovative microscopy technologies drive economic growth and global competitiveness in the next decade?

Every economy that has led the world from post-war America to modern-day South Korea has done so on the back of scientific curiosity, investment in infrastructure and a culture that promotes experimentation over failure. Sophisticated microscopy is in the base of that stack. It is impossible to make world-class semiconductors, batteries, biologics, or advanced materials without being able to see, measure and validate at micro- and nano-scale.

When governments invest in research infrastructure, governments are not spending money on labs; they are spending money on industrial competitiveness, export power and technological independence over the next ten years.

What role do academic-industry collaborations play in fostering innovation in microscopy, and how can these partnerships translate into financial benefits for both sectors?

Breakthrough innovation is virtually never an isolated occurrence. Academia poses the radical, essential questions whereas industry imposes practical concerns, scope and discipline of execution. It is not only that when the two collaborate discovery accelerates it becomes commercially meaningful.

This model has driven the most powerful innovation systems in the world: institutions (such as MIT and major semiconductor companies) have partnered with technology companies and advanced manufacturing companies (such as ETH Zurich) and institutions (such as Tsinghua University) have partnered with global players in the electronics industry. Such partnerships always translate scientific knowledge into commercial solutions.

The financial reasoning is obvious and justified. Industry minimizes the risk of R&D, minimizes the development process, and increases the success rates. Academia receives funding, real-life datasets, and relevance of its research worldwide. The innovation leaders do not rely on luck in these alliances  they make them a pillar of their economic policy, since they know that it is science-in-industry, which is what makes them competitive and develops them.

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How does the commercialization of innovative microscopy solutions contribute to revenue growth in industries such as pharmaceuticals, life sciences, and materials research?

Commercialized microscopy does not only refer to the occurrence of better images  it involves better decisions, faster and with more confidence. In drugs, it speeds up the approval of drugs. It is used in materials science to avoid expensive failures prior to scale-up. It has direct use in electronics to enhance the stability of yields and processes.

The current change is one of accessibility. Not all researchers or startups will have the capital cost to purchase the high-end microscopy system and that is where the ecosystem needs to develop. The common facilities across the nation, research and development centers, new vendor-driven operating or subscription models are becoming vital. These models enable the institutions and companies to achieve cutting-edge technology without necessarily investing heavily in it, which makes the high-end research capability more democratic.

Timing is equally important. The right technology in the right hands at the right time can be able to condense the years of experimentation cycles to months. The application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to imaging processes allows researchers to analyze data faster and at a larger scale than before, detect patterns sooner and make decisions that in the past took several repetitions to be reached.

The business performance can be quantified: companies that introduce sophisticated characterization into their processes will always perform better than their competitors since they can recognize problems earlier, execute processes more quickly, and release products with greater efficiency. That goes straight into revenue growth, better margins and predictability of the innovation pipelines.

How does innovation in microscopy create new employment opportunities, particularly in high-tech manufacturing, research, and data analysis sectors?

Microscopic innovation generates employment on three levels:

• Manufacturing ecosystem jobs: precision manufacturing, optics, detectors, vacuum technologies, electronics, mechatronics, field service, applications specialist.
• Workflow & data jobs: Image analysis engineers, AI/ML scientists, data engineers, computational microscopists, algorithm validation specialists.
• Industry adoption jobs Process engineers and QC specialists semicon, pharma, materials, batteries regulatory/quality roles validated digital workflows Process engineers and QC specialists in semicon, pharma, materials, batteries regulatory/quality roles validated digital workflows 

Currently, the only difference is that microscopy is no longer a PhD requirement but a software-vetted workflow, which thus alters the talent requirement beyond PhDs to a high-skill engineering and analytics position.

How will emerging economies leverage innovations in microscopy to strengthen their research capabilities and compete in the global market?

Emerging economies are in a historic inflection point. The current industrial revolution, as opposed to previous revolutions that required decades of heavy infrastructure before improvements could be made, allows countries to jump several steps to development by incorporating the appropriate technologies at the appropriate time. We have already witnessed this being played by countries that never had a banking infrastructure becoming the leaders in digital payments such as India with real-time transactions at population scale, or Kenya with mobile money making financial inclusion transformative. The same leapfrog effect can now be carried out in science and high-level research.

Emerging countries can skip over the legacies by making strategic investments in scientific capacity, talent and joint research institutions, and directly transition into high value innovation. With the democratization of access to advanced technologies, such as modern microscopy, startups, researchers and manufacturers will be able to find solutions to difficult problems more quickly  including better batteries and cheaper diagnostics. The nations that will be able to change their paradigm of making to the world and instead inventing to the world are the ones that will view science and engineering as a strategic economic driver, not the academic luxury. The use of technology in the next decade will not only close the divide of economies that it will redefine the leadership person(s).

What proportion of revenue growth today is driven by new product innovation versus pricing power, services, and recurring software upgrades?

In high technology markets, environmentally friendly development is never achieved through price it is achieved through innovation which introduces totally new use-cases and new customer segments. Consider how smartphones did not increase due to rising prices but increased due to the introduction of new value through apps, services and ecosystems. Or how aircraft engine manufacturers are making more money on service contracts than they do selling such engines in the long term. The identical structural transformation is occurring within the scientific and industrial technology.

Hardware is always necessary, it is the backbone. However the trend of value moving towards services, analytics and software-based workflows is being seen around the world as customers are no longer purchasing equipment but are investing in results. They desire productivity improvement, predictive service and data that can be repeated, and insight to action.

That is, the discussion has no longer remained as that of What does it cost? but now it is What does it enable? And in technology markets, the winning companies are the ones who have been making possible ever more.

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What are the key innovations in microscopy expected over the next 10 years, and how will they shape financial performance across research institutions and industries?

Over the next decade, microscopy will evolve from a standalone instrument into an intelligent, connected platform. We’re already seeing the shift. AI-native systems will automate acquisition, adapt imaging in real time, and instantly detect anomalies. Robotics and standardized workflows will enable higher throughput and unattended operation, while multimodal microscopy will combine structural, chemical, and mechanical insights in a single experiment. At the same time, in-situ techniques will allow scientists to observe materials and biological processes under real operating conditions, not just in static snapshots.

Advances in detectors and electronics will make imaging faster and more sensitive, and cloud-enabled platforms will enable global collaboration, reproducibility, and even digital twins of experiments that can be analyzed remotely at scale.

The financial impact is significant. The industry is moving from one-time capital purchases to lifecycle value models that include software, analytics, service, and consumables. For users, higher productivity and better uptime translate into stronger ROI, which accelerates adoption across manufacturing and quality control environments. For research institutions and shared facilities, improved utilization means better economics and greater scientific output per dollar invested.