There was a recent post-mortem on Konarka Technologies, a Massachusetts based solar company that had “power plastic,” a plastic solar technology that could generate power at 9 percent efficiency. The company raised a whopping $170 million for what strikes me (and I suspect others) as a cool tech best demo’ed in a university lab (the tech came out of a lab at UMass). The prospect of using inexpensive and flexible plastic was very attractive but as an early employee Dan Roach points out, “the unanswered question was always how efficient the product would be.” So basically a $170 million got spent on research and development with very little product getting to market outside of a  $180 messenger bag that could recharge mobile phones, which is a pretty cool idea though dare we say, a niche item. Before folding in May, the company had a partnership with 3M in the works and there’s bound to be some interesting IP after a couple hundred million of investment. Anybody looking for some cool assets on the cheap?