Championing the Cause of Innovation

Dear Colleagues,

The last few weeks have been an exciting time for our community. President Obama released his National Bioeconomy Blueprint, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities sponsored a very exciting conference on renewable energy, and the Industrial and Environmental Section of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) successfully concluded its ninth annual World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology & Bioprocessing. These events, in one form or another, celebrate the importance of the bioeconomy for addressing challenges to sustainable human development, and they all underscore the need to expand basic research and technological innovation as catalysts for economic development.

Some of us might see these events as a rehashing of perspectives and visions that have been part of our commitment for a number of years. However, hearing these strong voices from the federal government, leading public and land-grant universities, and industrial biotechnology leaders coming together to champion the cause of technological innovation is reassuring and provides me, and hopefully many others, with a sense of hope that we can expand the bioeconomy in such a way to address many of the challenges to sustainable human development. The need to bring these strong and diverse voices together to catalyze the development of the bioeconomy is well documented in the National Bioeconomy Blueprint with a call to “identify and support opportunities for the development of public-private partnerships and precompetitive collaborations—where competitors pool resources, knowledge, and expertise to learn from successes and failures.” This multi-institutional approach to developing the bioeconomy has always been a major focus of the leadership and Editorial Board of Industrial Biotechnology (IB) journal as we have sought to engage a broad spectrum of academic, government, and industrial researchers and stakeholders in a dialogue on how best to evolve the national and global bioeconomies.

A major role of IB in this dialogue is the sharing of original research findings from academic, government, and industrial researchers. Scientific discovery and technology innovation are major drivers of insights, intellectual property, and products emerging from our respective innovation ecologies, and they are driving the bioeconomy. Thus, the Journal is soliciting more original research articles from the diverse disciplines and institutions that are leading innovation across the full spectrum of the industrial biotechnology community. In addition, look to the Journal to provide more special issues on important and exciting topics such as novel methods for physical and chemical characterization of biomass materials, systems biology, and fungal biotechnology. We also seek to capture the elements and network structures that make innovation ecologies productive through a new recurring feature entitled “Catalyzing Innovation.” Members of the IB community bring many unique insights and perspectives on innovation. Sharing these insights is essential to building even more productive and robust innovation ecologies to drive the bioeconomy. This expansion of the Journal's original research content, together with the new feature “Catalyzing Innovation,” and continued coverage of industry news and patent updates are all part of our commitment to supporting biotechnology innovation as a means of meeting many of the sustainable human development challenges documented in the National Bioeconomy Blueprint.

By bringing together the many distinct and rich voices from our community we can play an essential role in implementing the National Bioeconomy Roadmap and supporting similar efforts around the world!