Description of the event

A day of Wonder was the spectacular final of an entire week of celebrating technology. The event gave intellectuals and curious minds a chance to see innovations on the edge, with a mix of technology, music, art and great food. The Health Area was located in the Aula where all projects related to health topics were presented, ranging from end projects of master students, such as the Exoskeleton and the Buddy, to the fall course in which cameras were used to register the exact movement during the process of falling. We had the opportunity to be part of the health area and present our own project to the visitors of the festival. Our aim was to teach the public more about synthetic biology and to make them excited about our project.

Our stand

Activities

With our project we aim to print a well-defined biofilm in 3 dimensions. Since the biofilm can be created at a certain rate and pattern, it is possible to create a well-defined structure. In order to show the existing problems, we have used pictures of dental plaque and biofilm formation within pipes to show them.

Winner of the contest

Bio³Dimensions – Business Case

Educating people is not only about giving lectures, it is also about offering the opportunity to feel and think the subject. We wanted to give this opportunity to students of the TU Delft in the form of a business case. The assignment made students think about how they would use a 3D biofilm printer for a practical, marketable use, and present their idea. Since the participants had different expertise, we started with a general introduction to iGEM, synthetic biology and our project. After that, groups of three persons were formed,each group having one of the iGEM team members as a tutor.

Based on the information about our project, the different groups could use one of our applications or come up with one on their own. They also had to choose their market of interest, think about the drawbacks of their technology and sketch a market plan. In the end, every group presented their idea with a poster pitch. We closed the meeting with a free barbeque to thank the participants, and continued discussions in a more informal setting.

Group Ideas

Smell Eaters

The first group presented a shoe sole on which a biofilm with the smell eaters (good bacteria) was printed and attached. The group knew about some “good bacteria” as being used for treating bodily odour. The “good” bacteria would produce substances that inhibit the odour compounds made by “bad bacteria”. Based on this, the group wanted to apply the idea to the shoe industry. Since the feet shape and size differ from person to person, the printer is useful because it can be adapted to every type of feet. The project’s poster is shown in Figure 1.

Purity straw

The second group provided a solution for the contamination of drinking water, the Purity Straw. The straw has a membrane inside, which can clean contaminated water. The straw is suitable to use it in most situations where access to clean water is limited.

The printer gives the opportunity to print different kind of membranes, which makes it useful for every type of contamination.

The team surprised us with a short but to the point market strategy on their poster (Figure 2). According to them, the product could be useful for humanitarian organisations in helping developing countries to get clean water. Moreover, the army can get access to clean water everywhere. With this technology they target especially remote areas, over populated regions and areas struck by disaster. Finally, why did they think the technology was useful and beneficial? Well, it is easy to use, the material is light and therefore easy to take with you. Finally, it could be small.

The discussion after the presentation contained some nice questions:

Lumy

Another team came up with a totally different application of our construct; ‘The Lumy”. Lumy provides a sustainable version of lights for bicycles. The Lumy can be ordered at a special website in every shape you like. The product you will receive at home consists of a sticky layer, a layer of nutrients (medium), the biofilm which has the property to emit light. So, the only thing you need at home is medium for the bacteria! Since batteries are not necessary anymore, the product could be highly sustainable.

The Lumy is especially useful in a country like the Netherlands (students for sure), since everyone uses a bikes often. Moreover, since the equipment is closed, the bacteria cannot escape.

Bactoplast

The final concept presented was similar with the idea Groningen’s iGEM team had two years ago. The printer will be used to print the biofilm required at that moment for healing processes. The so-called bactoplast is placed on the wound and will increase the healing process. Afterwards the signal molecules of the wound will disappear. This signal activates bacteria’s kill switch. Therefore, there is no danger of bacteria that will escape.

Wrap-up

Start with target audience

Before starting to write a business plan, you should identify the target audience of your project. In general, a business plan is a basic document required by any financial investment source. It is an opportunity of an entrepreneur (who wishes to create a new venture) to impress investors and attract funding. (Mason, 2004).

However, even if you are not planning to start a business from your iGEM project, writing a business plan can be useful to communicate the key business elements to a different target audience: the iGEM community and the general public.

Structure the Business Plan

A classical model of a Business Plan can be found in literature as described in (Abrams, 2010). There are many books and websites with various advice about writing such a document. The structure can be variable, depending on what information you want to give and to whom. Regardless of what the theme of the project is, its business plan should include at least the following core chapters:

Executive Summary. The definitory part of any business plan, the executive summary provides a concise and attractive overview of the entire project. It is meant to both inform and catch the audience’s attention. Keep in mind that it has to be attractive for an audience with various backgrounds - both scientific and nonscientific.

Company / Project overview. High level description of the elements of the business/project and how they integrate with each other. Motivation and core arguments supporting why the project will be a success are included here.

Market / Industry Analysis. The project is enveloped within the context of an industry/market. Market research is done on current and future market trends, competition, complementary products, suppliers, clients, etc. Based on this information, a competitive analysis is made to establish how the project (future company) could succeed in the respective environment (for example, by a SWOT analysis - will be explained later).

Product / Service. Describes the final product / service meant to be sold. Advantages or disadvantages of the product should be compared to existing similar solutions. Included is a description of R&D activities, evolution of product (life cycle), and legal issues or patenting if the case.

Marketing & Sales strategy. What customers can you sell to, how to communicate with them, how to sell the product/service. Moreover, this section must describe a long-term strategy on how to maintain and increase client base, while fending off competition.

Management and Organizational Structure. Essential to any project or company are its people and their interactions. This section should detail what kind of people the company will employ (both personal and professional typologies) and how they will be managed within a chosen organizational structure.

Social / Environmental impact. Although this section is not a must-have for regular business plans, it is highly recommended for iGEM. A core iGEM goal is to make Synthetic Biology known and understandable to the world. Therefore, it is important to predict how the project will be perceived by society, and how society can influence the evolution of business. NOTE: One should be aware not to repeat information that is already treated in Policy and Practice modules. Rather, impacts found in the Policy and Practice section should be analysed here from a business perspective.

(Optional) Investment and Financial forecast. This section is traditionally necessary for a business plan, but an exception can be made in the context of iGEM. As the target audience are not necessary investors, but the iGEM community and public, this section may be skipped. Moreover, financial forecasts and investment plans require considerable effort and expertise in order to be convincing. It is better to skip this part than write an unrealistic plan.

Use business theory and concepts

When writing a business plan, content information needs to be supported by existing business theory. Here are some points to consider:

Critical factors for new businesses. One can start developing a business plan by considering four essential factors that make or break a new business as proposed by (Sahlman, 2008). Here is an example of analysis that focuses on four interrelated factors critical to new businesses:

Enabling or hindering elements of a business. To consider both internal and external factors that can block or help an emerging business, a SWOT (Humphrey, 2005) analysis can be made. A Strength-Weakness-Opportunity-Threat (SWOT) is only one method of many, to evaluate these factors.

Marketing/Sales Business models. To gain clarity and structure how a product is marketed and sold, sales models can be used. In addition, comparison with sales models of successful companies can be helpful. After deciding on the model, a graphical scheme can be used to illustrate the entire supply chain. This shows where the new business comes into play in the chain.

Industrial trends and market niches. Choosing where to sell is a prerequisite for production, as each industry has different trends and market segments to sell into. Trends can help forecast what to sell, and identifying untapped market niches suggest where to sell.

Science communication. Often there is a communication gap between scientists and managers or public. Science communication involves relaying specialized knowledge to non-specialists and is key to mutual understanding between different background people.

Innovation management. As iGEM promotes creativity and innovation, considering how they can be included in the business plan is essential. Innovation patterns and concepts applied on a project help understand how innovation pushes an idea to a marketable application. For example, Henderson and Clark identify four types of innovation depending on its impact on existing competencies and their linkages - Incremental, Radical, Modular or Architectural Innovation (Henderson & Clark, 1990).

Identify and fulfill audience expectations

The business plan should align with, and support the entire project. Readers will be confused if too much new information is added, or if the information is not consistent with other sections of the project. We propose taking in account the following key points:

Direction The business plan helps delineate a strategic direction, clarifying project goals and progress to both iGEM team members and audience. On the long run, a strategic direction aids in keeping the project on track and observing if adjustments are needed.

Integration When doing research for the business plan, new knowledge and arguments come into play. Sometimes it is easy to deviate and include concepts irrelevant for your project. Make sure that new insights stay on subject by always relating them to your project. If they don’t relate, focus on only a few concepts that can be strongly tied to the project.

Validity Prove that assumptions and analysis are valid. Validity can be enhanced by supporting assumptions with interviews, questionnaires (or other data collection methods) and literature reviews.

Combine theory and practice within structure

After deciding on what theoretical concepts can explain project aspects, they can be included within a chosen structure. The executive summary should be left for last, as it is an overview of all the essential aspects identified through analysis. A business plan does not have to be rigid. It should be perfected as the iGEM project progresses.

Final thoughts

Finally, we stress the point that a business plan should be useful. It should help guide the project with respect to what is feasible or not from a business perspective. Moreover, it should be interesting to read for your audience, reflecting ideas of how the project could develop into a business.

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Our mission is to contribute to better and cheaper pharmaceutical and health products. By ambitioning to provide an innovative method of biofilm formation, we want to help increase the efficiency of manufacturing and testing processes. We deliver a partly automated, replicable and efficient solution by 3D printing biofilms. The method will partially replace some manual steps of current biofilm formation processes.

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Healthcare systems are developing all over the world, increasing the demand for pharmaceutical and healthcare products yearly. In order to increase supply, while maintaining or even lowering prices, the production process needs to be more efficient. Our vision is to partly automate biofilm processes for producing medicine and health care products, and removing detrimental biofilms that affect industrial equipment.

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In realising our mission, we are guided by our core values:

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Project description - Why biofilm printing?

Beneficial and detrimental biofilms form naturally in nature. Research on biofilms is twofold: One - preventing and removing detrimental biofilms, and two - exploiting beneficial biofilms.

How does printing biofilms help the industry and end-user clients?

With respect to the detrimental biofilms, Biolink binds together biofilms, forming 3D shapes on which removal products are tested. Printed biofilms are very reproducible, thus more similar to each other than grown biofilms, making biofilm removal results more reliable. Moreover, automation makes the biofilm formation process more controllable, thereby increasing efficiency of testing. In short, production costs decrease and product effectiveness increases.

On the client side, thorough testing of biofilm removal products increases their safety and reliability. People are interested in efficiently removing detrimental biofilms, but are equally (if not more) concerned of negative side effects that may appear. Moreover, cost advantage for production companies can translate in either lower prices for customers, or higher quality of products through re-investment and innovation.

Concerning beneficial biofilms, we plan to expand in this field in the future. With cell-immobilization, the bioprinter could form several layers of different cells that through interaction, produce useful compounds. Biofilms can also be formed out of beneficial bacteria on 3D structures or on surfaces (filters, pipes, etc) for creating protective layers.

Industry Analysis (Abrams, 2003)

This section sets the industrial network in which our project operates as a business. An overview of potential customers, supply chain, competition, and industrial trends is shown.

Industry network description

Our Business Sector: Service & Manufacturing of Biofilms

Our Market Segment (by Technology): Biological Components and Integrated Systems (Transparency, 2015).

1. Potential Customers:

2. Suppliers, Distributors, Sales

3. Competitors

There are some scientific publications where bacteria are 3D printed, with the purpose of studying bacterial colony behaviour and antibiotic resistance. (Connell, 2013). However, to our knowledge, this idea has not been commercialised. In addition, our ideas on applications are novel.

Nevertheless, there are multiple potential threatening companies or groups that could compete with us:

4. Similar products.

- 3D organ and tissue bioprinters.

5. Potential investors

- TU Delft Incubator: YES! Delft is a TU Delft supported organization that offers advice and space for starting a company. They also help with a starting loan and establish contact between startups and possible investor network.

- TU Delft research grants are also a viable option, as the project is currently held and supported by the TU Delft Bionanoscience Research Department.

- A corporation or established company interested in our project can invest in co-development. Such a partner/investor that can more easily support costs for perceived future gains.

Trends in industry & Strategic opportunities

Past and future growth of business sector:

Industries of operation: Synthetic biology, Pharmaceutics, Industrial biofilm removal, 3D printing. Each of these industries are either growing or stable, with no apparent threat of disappearing or drastically decreasing in size.

Barriers and Disadvantages of the industrial ecosystem.

Investors have high bargaining power; Because our project combines two relatively new technologies, it can be labeled as a high risk investment. This means that investors will be more reluctant to fund us, or demand high returns to compensate for the high risks.

Client high bargaining power; The nature of our customer intimate strategy implies that we have only a few customers for whom we provide a tailored service. Losing one client poses a high threat to the us, therefore placing our clients in an advantageous negotiating position. However, if we can become indispensable to our clients and difficult to imitate by other companies, the advantage can turn to our side.

Strong potential competition; A significant number of established companies with financial and technological strength can threaten our small business if they replicate our services.

Biotechnology industries historically have long development periods with low returns and tricky product approval cycles. Moreover, research requires high capital investment needs.

Technological Innovation and Adoption Strategy

In this section, we describe how Biolink can grow from idea to service. We describe the innovation process and utilize a strategic analysis tool: Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis to underline key elements that can help or hinder our technology and its emergence.

Type of Innovation. Biolink aims to improve a technological process by partly changing technology used, thus realizing a Technological Process Innovation. As the improvement builds upon the existing biofilm formation process, without any radical changes, we label it as incremental. The innovation aims to increase productivity and reduce costs of the entire production/research process. We argue that effects are not directly noticeable by biofilm removal products’ end-users.

Innovation Process. Because it involves advanced technologies, innovation will continue in an industrial and/or academic setting. We perceive three main actor groups enabling innovation:

Adoption at organizational level. Following the innovation phase, we plan to market our product to companies with whom co-development was done. Pioneer companies who invested in co-development are best prepared to adopt our solution and continue to support it until it becomes profitable. Successful adoption of the new technology will encourage other companies to consider our services. This offers an incentive for business growth, expanding service breadth (different companies will want customized solutions) and specialization.

The SWOT Analysis highlights what internal and external factors can influence the evolution of Biolink. These factors mostly affect Biolink at strategic level (how the company performs on long term). Strengths and Weaknesses refer to internal characteristics of Biolink as a company and our capabilities of performing operations. Opportunities and Threats are external factors that might influence our progress.

Sales and Marketing Strategy

Sales business model.Biolink provides a full service: 3D-printing tools, set-up of equipment on-premises, training, maintenance and customization based on needs.

Customer intimate competitive strategy. To gain a competitive edge, we cultivate unique relationships with our clients. By providing an end-to-end service to just a few clients (instead of limited services for a large number) we achieve a double effect. First, we retain our clients on long term by gaining their trust and ensuring satisfaction. Second, the customer intimate strategy and high customizability offered will be difficult to imitate by competitors. (Treacy, 1997)

To achieve positive market results with this strategy we plan the following:

This strategy requires a strong understanding of clients and their processes. It also demands a decentralized company structure that can quickly react to changes in clients’ needs. (Treacy, 1997).

Management and Organizational Structure

We propose an organizational structure based on the iGEM team structure.To provide high quality, specialized and customised services for a small number of clients, we organize as a Holacracy (Robertson, 2007). Similar to the iGEM team structure, a holacratic organization removes hierarchy by distributing responsibility and power across distinct roles.

Just like in iGEM, people are responsible for certain roles (such as R&D, Sales, Customer support, etc.) while also being free to help out in other areas. In this way, employees are involved and responsible, feeling that they drive the company forward by doing what they are best at. People can have several distinct roles and work on several different tasks/projects.

For example, in a 3D printer project specifically designed for a toothpaste manufacturing company, a team of several members with various roles can be assembled to fulfil requirements. Some members are fully dedicated to this project, while others work on it in parallel with different projects. This structure supports high flexibility, reaction and development time, while encouraging innovation and creativity. While teams self-organize, an overview and general direction of projects is given by a broader circle containing the team - instead of exerting authority, it guides teams on the right track.

The holacratic organizational structure is graphically presented below (Robertson, 2007):

Because the holacratic structure involves high employee autonomy, it requires several traits from people working in this system (TheWorkologist, 2015). These traits are similar to the ones identified in freelancers and entrepreneurs:

Regarding our inter-organizational network, we believe that loose connections with industry and academia are appropriate for our type of business. In a loosely coupled network, actors have higher self-determination and are more observant of the environment. Therefore, we can be more adaptable. Because we will be a small, specialized company, we need to keep track of emerging technologies to quickly adopt them. Both size and organizational structure enables us to speculate opportunities and avoid threats faster than large companies. When an opportunity or threat arises, we can seek for help in our network and change certain relationships from loose to strong, until solving the issue.

For example, collaboration with a 3D printer manufacturer would need to be strong in the beginning, until a viable solution is finalized. Afterwards, loose connections with the 3D printing industry would be more beneficial, so we can scan for incremental advancements improving our existing solution.

People are the foundation for growing an idea for any business or project. Our team members’ backgrounds are diverse and can fulfil most of the functions needed to start a business. Strong cohesion of the group is also paramount for success.

Project limitations and acknowledgements

We acknowledge the limitations of our current team and project structure. First of all, for both cases of future failure or success, the structure and strategy of the company would need to be revised and adapted. Because prediction is nearly impossible, we acknowledge that the proposals in the business plan fit the present, but are fully subject to change depending on the evolution of events.

We identify some of the limitations that may hinder future business development.

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