Abstract
Dear Colleagues:
In June 2012, IB inaugurated the “Catalyzing Innovation” feature. Our goal in launching this feature is to capture the elements and network structures that make for productive innovation ecologies. The elements that we were referring to are the scientific, technological, policy, and market drivers that interact to fulfill societal needs, while the network structures represent the various ways individual researchers, universities, professional societies, corporations, national laboratories, think tanks, and regional development groups come together to provide innovative solutions for industrial biotechnology development. This interest in understanding the core elements and how these elements are connected to form networks or systems comes naturally for me given that systems engineering was part of my education. Thus, a systems engineering foundation has always served as a lens through which I view biotechnology innovation. The term “innovation ecologies” is used to underscore that innovation today is akin to natural ecological systems, in that diverse players are brought together to occupy open innovation spaces, in what appears to be an autonomous process. This is what Dr. Simon Levin has argued are the complex adaptive systems essentials of natural ecologies. 1
Over the past year IB has reached out to a number of our colleagues to help us distill some of the essentials needed to drive biotechnology innovation. During the first year we explored how micro- and nanofabrication capabilities are yielding novel DNA sequencing and assembling tools that are driving industrial biotechnology innovation across a broad application space, ranging from improving aquaculture production to analyzing an E. coli outbreak. These features, in addition to providing our readers with an eye on some exciting biotechnology tools, provide strategies for successful deployment of these tools. We also learned about some of the challenges associated with big data and its use in data-intensive scientific research. Given the importance of big data for the life sciences community, the development of tools to support community access, management, and use is crucial to scientific discovery and life science technology development. Thus, it is important that the industrial biotechnology community share strategies for more effective use of big data. The community or network approach to industrial biotechnology research and development has been a recurring theme in the Catalyzing Innovation features. Whether it is developing novel research center design to facilitate multidisciplinary R&D activities between governmental, academic, and industrial researchers, or community development of metabolic reconstructions, we are increasingly engaging large networks of scientists and engineers for industrial biotechnology innovation. How we nucleate and support such networks will continue to be a theme addressed in this feature.
This IB issue is packed full of stories on how to drive industrial biotechnology innovations. Two stories reflect national and regional development efforts. The first comes from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, and Festel Capital, Fuerigen, Switzerland. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, often referred to as EHT, is a top tier research university with a long history of technological innovation. This institution has teamed up with Festel Capital, an advisory and investment firm, to share insights on how to “overcome the technology transfer gap between innovation in basic academic research and development (R&D) and its commercialization by established companies.” This gap continues to limit the pace of industrial biotechnology development around the world, and finding ways to minimize this gap is important for our community. The second story comes out of the Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. University of Waterloo has been an innovation center for two decades, and the university attributes part of its success to an “Inventor-owns” intellectual property (IP) policy in which “students and researchers fully own whatever they create.” In essence, inventors have a great deal of leeway in how they enter into IP agreements with industry. This represents one of several models used by universities to tap in to their respective innovation ecologies for financial gains and to support local and regional economic development.
At the core of any sustained innovation effort is the influx of young researchers and technicians into various innovation niches. These young members of innovation ecologies bring excellent scientific and technical fundamentals, enormous energy and enthusiasm, and a unique set of insights and perspectives that are reflective of their generation, and all of these attributes are extremely important for technological innovation. This need to maintain an influx of young researchers and technicians into the innovation enterprise is echoed very strongly in the story of Bell Laboratory's dominance in communication and information technology, as told by Jon Gertner. 2
In this issue of IB we present two compelling stories on partnerships between community colleges and industry to support the education and training of the next generation of biotechnology researchers and technicians. The first story is part of a “Roundtable Discussion” moderated by Dr. Sonia Wallman, Director, Northeast Biomanufacturing Center and Collaborative (NBC 2 ). Dr. Wallman hosts an engaging discussion with several colleagues from community colleges and biotechnology companies from across the country on the need to develop training programs for technicians to support industrial biotechnology. The need for this type of partnership was strongly captured during the discussion as were the benefits to the colleges, companies, and the community. In another story, Michael Fino, Director, Biotechnology Program, MiraCosta College, Oceanside, CA, provides some very valuable insights from MiraCosta's 20 years of experience in integrating community interests and commitment with the needs of the local and regional biotechnology sector for a well-educated and trained workforce.
As noted earlier, innovation is occurring in a very open ecosystem with multiple players. Thus, acquiring stories on how various entrepreneurs make the right set of connections to launch successful business enterprises is an important goal of IB. In this issue we hear an exciting story from Dr. Heidi Kuehnle, President and Co-Founder, Kuehnle AgroSystems, Honolulu, HI, on how she and her colleagues created their industrial biotechnology enterprise through different research collaborations and integrating various commercial pieces. Kuehnle AgroSystems is a small algae-based enterprise that is engaged in R&D and product development to generate novel industrial biotechnology solutions and products. It has proven to be a very strategic and nimble enterprise working a very open biotechnology innovation space.
We are fortunate at IB to have a great set of scientific and technology innovation leaders on our Editorial Board. In our “Meet Our Editorial Board” feature we hear from a colleague that has been with IB from the very beginning, Dr. Michael Ladisch, Purdue University, and one of our more recent additions to the Board, Dr. Val Smith. Both of these individuals have had profound impacts on biotechnology innovation through their own research and development activities, and their public service to their respective professional societies and our community.
We continue with our tradition of bringing original research to the community and this is reflected in the article by Beitel and Knob, on the discovery of β-glucosidase that is glucose-tolerant. In addition, we continue to feature “scouting reports,” such as the one from the SPI Bioplastics Council on how bioplastics development and production is evolving independently of biofuels. Keeping an eye on the shifting development landscape and markets is necessary to develop innovation strategies. Also, keeping a finger on the pulse of the industry news is an important service that IB provides our community. In essence, we are seeking to help our readers drive the pace of industrial biotechnology innovation.