I would like to offer some crucial background about the US National Nanotechnology Initiative (Nature 467, 18–21; 2010).

A decade or so before the initiative was founded, advocates such as K. Eric Drexler and other exploratory engineers helped to develop nanotechnology as a concept and to bring it to a wider audience. Science-fiction writers, including Greg Bear and Neal Stephenson, had written award-winning books that used speculative takes on nanotechnology to capture the public imagination. These contributions arguably smoothed the way for the initiative.

Although Drexlerian ideas were unpopular with some science managers and researchers, they influenced the thinking of people like Richard Smalley from the early 1990s — the Nobel laureate even sent copies of Drexler's books to potential patrons. Without them, nanotechnology could not have secured the traction it did in 2000.

Scientists in the United States who paved the way for the initiative included those at Cornell University's National Research and Resource Facility for Submicron Structures and the various NSF-funded materials-science laboratories. There were also active programmes in the United Kingdom and Japan years before the US initiative came along.

Readers might wonder whether nanotechnology was just a rebranding of previous research initiatives and whether other fields suffered as a result of the funding poured into it, not to mention how science managers such as Mihail Roco and his colleagues came to make the case for a national nanotechnology initiative, and whether corporations were involved in the decision-making.

Recognizing the role of unexpected ideas and assorted actors in forming policy initiatives is important at a time when major programmes are being launched in new fields, including in synthetic biology, sustainable energy, stem-cell therapy, geoengineering and fusion research.