Dr Holger Becker (co-founder and CSO, Microfluidic ChipShop GmbH, Germany) co-ordinates a regular series of articles focussing on issues that may shed extra light on commercialisation of microfluidic devices dealing with issues such as education, bottlenecks, hype, technology transfer and moving from proof of principle to application, for all areas. These articles will be written to encourage debate and stimulate discussion - and six articles will be published each year.