Team:Open Science Global/Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Engagement

Human Practices Integrated Human Practices Education Entrepreneurship

Building a complete frugal bio-foundry playbook

The goal of Friendzymes is to help democratize biotechnology. One aspect of this goal is to create open-source wetware, software and hardware in order to build a frugal biofoundry.

How will bio-foundries fund and sustain their operation? To answer this question, we initiated a sub-project called “Bioentrepreneurship With the Garage Door Open.”

If we map out our technical innovation work in a business model canvas, we’ll see that it is designed to answer questions posed by the left side of the canvas:

What capabilities, equipment and processes do you need to create products?
How do you operate a biofoundry?
How much will the production cost?
What companies and institutions do you partner with?

Business Model Canvas

For us to create a complete frugal bio-foundry playbook, we also need to answer questions posed by the right side of the canvas:

Which customer segments want this solution the most?
Why do they want the solution? (value proposition)
How do we get, keep and grow customers?
How do we price the products to optimize reach and sustainability?

Bioentrepreneurship With the Garage Door Open will answer these questions.

DIY Lean LaunchPad (Evidence-based Entrepreneurship

We will make use of a methodology called “Lean LaunchPad.” This methodology is used in Stanford, the National Institutes of Health of the USA, and accelerators like Indiebio. When taught to scientists, the Lean LaunchPad is presented as “evidence-based entrepreneurship.” This means we need to prototype both the technical solution and the market solution. For Friendzymes to know whether our frugal biofoundry actually works, we need to see the actual engineered organisms produce our desired proteins in resource-constrained environments like rural Philippines and Ghana. If we want to know whether this biofoundry could be part of a sustainable business, we need to see actual customers pay for these products.

Readiness in the product development side of the canvas means we know the exact sequences, protocols and equipment to synthetize that product. Readiness in the customer development side means we know the go-to-market, pricing, regulatory and channel strategies to sell the product.

As the name suggests, this will involve a systematic validation and iteration of business model assumptions with around a hundred interviews and test sales.

BMC DBTL

In Stanford, the NIH and in accelerators, the Lean LaunchPad is facilitated by a teaching team. In our case, we will extract learning objectives and deliverables from the Lean LaunchPad Educators Guide, particularly Appendix D: Sample Life Sciences Syllabus, and find a way to learn the objectives and produce the deliverables.

Working With the Garage Door Open

Our goal is to create a playbook that could be used by labs, especially in resource-constrained areas. Each lab will operate in a different cultural and economic context. This means we cannot simply port a business model that works from one location to another. Each location must search for a business model that works in their context. To help them do this, we will document the steps that we undertake, the information we gather, and the business model redesigns we make based on our discoveries.

Work Breakdown Structure

We will follow the Lean LaunchPad syllabus for Life Sciences used by the United States National Institutes of Health (Appendix D of the Lean LaunchPad Educators Guide, p. 201). The syllabus takes 10 weeks and involves around 100 interviews and test sales, and possibly creating a minimum viable product. This means we will be continuing this sub-project well after the iGEM 2021 jamboree.

Deliverables

Prototype (ie, actual reagents produced using the Frienzymes biofoundry that could be sold)
Narrative per step
At completion

10-minute presentation of lessons learned
2-minute video of the technology

*The plan below is taken directly from the Lean LaunchPad Life Sciences Syllabus. We will find equivalent resources for videos and books we don’t have access to.

Instead of weeks, we will divide the work into work sprints of 1-2 weeks.

Sprint 1

Sprint 1

Sprint 2

Sprint 2

Needs findings - connecting the Value Proposition and Customers
Value Proposition
Best practices in customer discovery

10-minute presentation of lessons learned
2-minute video of the technology
How to call on people you don't know. How to get the most out of the people you do.
Expectations, speed, tempo, logistics, commitments.
How do I protect my IP when I speak to partners
Does Lean work for non-software efforts
How do interview
How is an interview different than a sales call

Sprint 3

Sprint 3