What's Your Bio Strategy?: How to Prepare Your Business for Synthetic Biology

by John Cumbers

The last 50 years have been dominated by microprocessors and information technology. The next 50 will be defined by engineered living systems.

Consumer packaged goods, energy, food, healthcare, and materials industries are being transformed by the digitization of biology, gene editing tools, and synthetic biology - the rapidly developing field of engineering biology.

What's Your Bio Strategy? is a collection of interviews with the innovators like George Church (Harvard University), Andras Forgacs (Modern Meadow), Jason Kelly (Ginkgo Bioworks), Andrew Hessel (Autodesk), Suzanne Lee (Biofabricate), Pamela Silver (Harvard University), and J. Craig Venter describing the massive advances making biology easy and accessible.

What tools and technologies are driving bio-fabrication, gene editing and synthetic biology? What industries are being disrupted today? How must your business prepare for engineered biology?

What's Your Bio Strategy? includes a framework to cut through the noise and incorporate engineered biology into your business. It is an excellent companion for strategic planners and executives who need to plan product development strategies.

John Cumbers Ph.D., is the founder of SynBioBeta, the activity hub for synthetic biology startup companies, industry, and investors. Karl Schmieder M.S./M.F.A., is the founder of messagingLAB, a strategic marketing firm that works with life science leaders.

Genres: Business

190 pages, Paperback

Published November 3, 2017

Reviews

[Suchi S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poorly written. I expected a lot more out of the interviews with the leaders in synthetic biology. It is a nice book if you want to know what is synthetic biology and where the technology can take us. The questions asked were similar across interviews and even though it was nice to see how the answers changed between people, I don't think I got great insights. I did not see a great answer to the question in the title of the book. Maybe the answer is in there in the several interviews but it doesn't look like the writers made efforts to flesh out the conversations they had. I often had to revisit the question while reading to remember what was being asked. It was also jarring to read this as the interviews didn't have a flow to them, it was more like jumping from aspect to aspect of synthetic biology. Did not enjoy this on the whole. I reiterate, it is a good read to know about the leaders in synthetic biology if you are not in the field but if you are, there is a good chance you are not going to enjoy this.

[Jonatan Westholm · Rating 4 out of 5]

A list of 25 interviews. The best ones are Very Good. The less interesting ones are at least short. A lot of overlap certainly, but suppose it can't be helped. It will be interesting to have this book to look back at in the future. Some things will probably seem overly optimistic, other things will seem right on point.

[Lex Krishnadath · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not found it interesting enough