In the UK the Home Office for the UK estimates that the forensic market is valued at £70-100 million (2013-14). This is just one country. By thinking about the police forces of the world the worldwide market for forensic science becomes massive. However bringing a biological project to market can take years, even decades to complete. Public perception of biology and forensics also has a huge impact on how quickly products can develop, as well as how they perform. Scientific developments are always closely grilled by the public, but comparing biological to that of the electrical, computing, and the chemical industry and biology seems to come under the most scrutiny. Tampering with cells, is a very scary thought to the average person. They can't always escape irrational thoughts of outbreaks of diseases and other thoughts being tagged along with biology. This also follows with forensics as the ethical issues its linked with has a big effect on its public perception.

Sadly its not like the movies where people in suits turn up with a suitcase full of money, just because of your idea. It can take years, even decades to get products to market. It depending on the complexity of the project and what is trying to be achieved. When trying to commercialise you have to set realistic expectations. With an idea you need to see there is a need or a use for what you are making, a good mark up, and a target audience to sell it too. For our toolkit we are targeting police forces and forensic units around the world. Even this is not simple as it seems. We are targeting multiple customer basis with multiple needs. There a different layers of management and processes the tool kit would have to go through to get to a crime scene. From this we made sure our kit could be used from murders to robberies and be as simple to use as possible. This way it could be used by the best crime scene ivestigators to the everyday police person, acessing a wide consumer base.

We also have to look at what the project is doing and the competition it faces. Is it more effective than what is already used? What's the clean up impact of our products? How is it going to be presented as evidence? Is it destructive to evidence? These are just a few of many questions we have had to ask ourself whilst also identifying who the toolkit is for.

Engineering in biology is an emotive subject. People don't like scientist tinkering with biology. Scientist have bad press and a lot of misinformation has gone around. This has created a public image of evil scientist who create a web of lies too use biology for their own personal gain. Most of the public's opinions are formed from the news banner headlines, and from TV shows. Obviously this is not true, but it shows that it is imperative that engineering in biology is sold in a positive way. From this we identified the positive unique selling aspects of toolkit. Our project has a "crime fighting and justice" aspect with a "science first approach". Next we identified the gaps in forensics products that are on the market and we look to take advantage of these. This lead to the biospray being a presumptive investigative tool looking to get rid of false positives, the chromium detector to aid with weapon analysis that is not clear to the naked eye, and fingerprint ageing putting people in a crime scene at a certain time. The fingerprint ageing has the advantage that its never been achieved before.

After this stage we have to sell it to the people with understanding behind forensic products. This is where the labrotory work and testing stages would be used to back up the products with facts. Synthetic Biology differes from gernic commericalsation because the science needs to have been proven to be safe (within coutries guidelines) and produce results.

A lot of people forget when commercialising something that it can take over their life. There needs to be belief in what was being done. What is it worth in terms of your life. Business can add a lot of stress to life. Many forget the simple things in starting up a business such as overheads like cleaning products, building maintenance and taxes. We believe our ideas are fantastic and so have the experts we've spoken to, but putting it into business would be a whole different ball game.

Ultimately to commercialise you need a clear view of what is involved, good timing , understanding of the product life time with its limitations, and an assessment of the competition. Is what we doing feasible and does it fill a need? These are two key questions any business should always be asking itself.