I was beaming with delight when I read that John Goodenough, Stanley Wittingham and Akira Yoshino received the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the “development of lithium-ion batteries.”

Wittingham’s initial work on batteries dates back to the 1970s while at Exxon. Goodenough’s seminal work on LCO cathodes at Oxford was published in 1980. Yoshino’s contributions on the graphite anode came in 1980s at Asahi Kasei in Japan. Sony converted their ideas into the first commercial lithium-ion battery product in 1991.

New menu settings inside Apple’s iPhones display a warning sign if the device’s battery is not recognized as authentic. Other smartphone manufacturers are curbing users and unauthorized repair shops from replacing the battery.

Why it matters: Smartphone manufacturers and Apple say that their actions guarantee the integrity and safety of the batteries by preventing the possible use of counterfeit batteries. Some users have objected citing a right to repair.

You are an entrepreneur. You understand that batteries are powering the future. You think present battery technology falls short of market demands. You invented a new battery technology. You may even have some early prototypes that show some exceptional promise. So you start a new company to commercialize your new technology. Welcome to the Battery Gold Rush, ca. 21st century.

In the first Gold Rush, ca. 1849, many made fortunes, and many others lost riches. The new Battery Gold Rush will not be much different. So what factors should you be thinking about in your pursuit of the battery holy grail?

Let’s say you love to ride your bicycle and that you want to measure speed without using fancy computers and GPS. What would you do?

High-school physics to the rescue! All we need is the circumference of the wheel then count the number of rotations the wheel makes in a certain amount of time that we can measure with our stopwatch. The speed, v, is calculated as the number of rotations, N, multiplied by the circumference, L — that’s the total distance traveled by the wheel — divided by the measured time, T. Put in one simple equation:

The concept of risk and risk management is not new. In 1688, Edward Lloyd set up what would become today Lloyd’s of London to contain the emerging risks of the new and growing maritime trans-Atlantic trade. Since then, the business world has worked diligently to contain such risk in everything from food to the Internet.