Process Innovation

Prelude - What is Process Innovation?

Not about sci-fi narratives - In the pulsating realm of innovation, where headlines dazzle with the promises of lab-grown meats and milk conjured from fermentation, there exists a silent force reshaping industries, one optimized step at a time—Process Innovation. While the glamour of futuristic foods steals the spotlight, the unsung hero, Process Innovation, is quietly revolutionizing the very core of how we manufacture, produce, and sustain. It's not about the splashy headlines or sci-fi narratives; it's about the intricate dance of efficiency, sustainability, and transformative change happening behind the scenes. So, as we marvel at the spectacle of meats cultivated in laboratories or with a million dollar cell therapy or with billions of dollar worth DNA semiconductor replacements for data storage, let's embark on a journey into the heart of innovation that doesn't just tantalize the senses just on the surface, but redefines the essence of industry itself.

Welcome to the quiet revolution, where the future isn't just tasted; it's crafted with precision, sustainability, and a relentless commitment to change—the Process Innovation frontier.

Process innovation involves making significant improvements or changes to the way tasks or activities are performed within an organization, industry or vertical, essentially by resolving bottlenecks.

Deep tech Significance and Context -

The last decade marked the onset of a new industrial revolution, catalyzed by trailblazing companies such as Tesla and SpaceX , ushering in a transformative shift in the collective consciousness of the innovation ecosystem. While the digital juggernauts like 谷歌 , 微软 , 亚马逊 , and 苹果 dominated the preceding century, Meta /Facebook surfed the same wave in the early part of this century. Notably, this transformative shift compelled each of these tech giants to diversify their portfolios into various science and technology ventures.

Google explored Aging, Biotech, and Life Sciences through initiatives like Calico Life Sciences , Verily , and Google DeepMind 's Alphafold AI. Microsoft's recent investment in OpenAI represents a strategic pivot—maintaining a digital focus while actively developing capabilities reliant on advancements in computing power and material sciences. Jeff Bezos followed suit with strategic investments in Blue Origin , Altos Labs , and multiple robotics ventures.

These strategic moves by the major tech players venturing into the realm of Science and Technology initiated a competitive race to invest in similar ventures, attracting substantial capital and talent to the field of Deep Tech. The momentum was further accelerated by climate change awareness, regulatory efforts to decarbonize and reduce plastic pollution; providing a strong impetus to sectors like CCUS, Biomaterials, Bioeconomy, Energy economy and the broader Green economy.

The Advent of Tourist Capital

However, it also attracted "tourist capital" to these sectors, driven by the hype created. While this sudden influx of capital supported the emergence of numerous Deep Tech ventures, it posed challenges for the sustainable growth of deserving ventures. A deficit in field knowledge resulted in capital gravitating toward flashy products, neglecting investments in the tools and technologies essential for making these products economically viable. COVID played a role in mitigating tourist capital to some extent. Then, the advent of mRNA vaccines from BioNTech SE and Moderna reignited the race.

While mRNA technology contributed significantly to saving humanity, its application in daily life faces challenges due to high production costs. I doubt that any other mRNA product will go such fast adoption in the coming years and will have to follow the path taken by any other biologic. The massive scale of vaccine production and subsidies played a role in keeping vaccine costs relatively low and the need fastened the regulatory and adoption process.

Unreal economies

Consider the promise of artificial meat, ignoring the basic economics of food and beverages. A burger costing over $100 may find a niche market, but it can't replace a $5 street burger. ("Producers have since slashed production costs by 99 percent to roughly $17 per pound"). The problem lies in the considerable spending on achieving the perfect texture, color and marbling for cell-based meat. While these are important adoption requirements, the underlying cause of high costs is the cell production itself—a long-standing bottleneck in the sector contributing to the high costs of cell and gene therapy for decades.

Let's elevate the discussion and consider whether cell-based meat is genuinely animal-free, an argument used up by a number of cell based meat supporters. The cell culture process involves the use of Fetal Bovine Serum, extracted from the blood of young calves. Do I need to elaborate further?

My previous note on bottlenecks delves into the limitations hindering the Bioeconomy from widespread adoption. Disruptive innovations and entire sectors often struggle in the market because bottlenecks impede their widespread commercialization.

Bird's eye view - Expanding our focus to the broader Green Economy, the hydrogen industry encounters challenges in transportation, vertical farming wrestles with elevated operational costs and power consumption, and the Bioeconomy contends with limitations in bioprocessing. Repeatedly, it becomes clear that sectors burdened with bottlenecks not only face competitiveness hurdles but also endure survival struggles.

Addressing these challenges is crucial not only for the survival of these verticals but also for transforming the Green Economy from a mere pipe dream into a tangible reality.

What can transform these into a reality? Well Keep an eye out for my next note on Cost economics!

For action items, I am listing here some common metrics to look into while looking for enabling technologies resolving bottlenecks.

Common Process Innovation Metrics:

1. Efficiency Gains: Improvement in the speed and effectiveness of processes. Metric: Reduction in processing time, increased throughput.
2. Cost Reduction: Lowering the overall costs associated with a process. Metric: Decrease in production costs, resource utilization optimization.
3. Resource Utilization: Efficient use of resources like energy, water, and raw materials. Metric: Reduction in resource consumption per unit of output.
4. Quality Improvement: Enhancing the quality of the final product or service. Metric: Reduction in defects, improvement in product consistency.
5. Innovation Adoption Rate: Speed at which new technologies or methods are adopted. Metric: Time taken to implement new innovations and the criteria to be adopted.

Process Innovation metrics for Biomanufacturing :

1. Yield Improvement: Enhancing the quantity of the desired product from raw materials. Metric: Increase in product yield per unit of input. One of the prime bottlenecks in the cell based industries is the large scale quality production of cells and remains the biggest underlying factor for high costs of the end products. Kolibri , a Paris based venture is overcoming the limitations of both the scalability and efficiency in cell production by playing music to the cells. Essentially they are using acoustic waves to keep cells stacked over each other and allow the mammallian cells to grow in large volumes of liquid culture.
2. Bioprocess Efficiency: Optimization of biological processes involved in manufacturing.Metric: Improved fermentation or cell culture efficiency. Have you heard about ufraction8? Monika Tomecka, PhD and her team have managed to scale up a modular microfluidics based separation and processing, that can be retrofitted to existing fermerters and cell production units alike, immediately increasing the yields. Another upcoming venture worth mentioning here is Arsenale BioYards overhauling the design of production to suit both the economy and quality of production.
3. Bio-Based Raw Materials: Substitution of traditional raw materials with bio-based alternatives. A different criteria could be the percentage of natural polymers or their mimics in the final product. Metric: Percentage of bio-based materials used in production.
4. Biodegradability/Sustainability: Measure of the ability of the end product to break down naturally. Metric: Percentage of product components that are biodegradable. I will elaborate number 3 and 4 in a separate post, as these are taking main stage for a number of organizations and their products.