Economy and Management in Biotechnology

The biotechnology companies needs people who take decisions on when and how to make a business of a scientific novelty developed in the lab. This course teaches you how to make such decisions for bulk products and high-value products.
The course consists of a financial, an entrepreneurial and an economic and managerial parts whose focus are:

• Economic potential of a new biotechnology product/process in the current biotech market
• Entrepreneurial approach to the creation, development and validation of business propositions in the Biotech sector
• The business/organizational structure to design and develop a novel biotechnology process/product at industrial scale

In the first part, you learn how to model the business behind a biotechnological product. The theory comprises three aspects:

• Analyse the effect of the production scale and of the production factors on cost analysis of the bioprocess in your company
• Analyse the financial aspect of your company: cash-flow analysis, funding, debt, stocks, product portfolio
  In the second part, you learn how to get in the market phase. This boils down to
• Insight on Entrepreneurial skills, tools and strategies to build a profitable and sustainable business in the biotech sector
• Knowledge on key milestones and decision points for developing a feasible business proposition
  In the third part, you learn how to consolidate the role of your company/business in the biotech market. This brings you into:
• Analyse the behavior of market stakeholders other than your company, such as potential competitors and customers, as well the government and society
• Designing the management structure of the business behind a biotechnological innovation both at small and at large industrial/market scale

This course is meant as a necessary step a series of bioprocess engineering courses at MSc level towards scaling a relevant industrial scale. The required knowledge is:

• Knowledge and skills from bioprocess engineering design courses such as BPE20306 Bioreactor Design, BPE-20806 Separation Process Design, or similar courses
• Knowledge skills from math courses such as MAT14903 Mathematics 1 and MAT15003 Mathematics 2 or similar courses. In particular it is required proficiency in analysing and solving math problems involving sets of algebraic and ordinary differential equations.
• Proficiency in team-working and report/plan writing
  This course provides the needed support for the design cases in BCT-32306 Advanced Biorefinery, and for BPE-60312 Bioprocess Design.

After successful completion of this course, students are able to apply to a biotech business the principles of cost and profit analysis, microeconomic analysis of markets, entrepreneurial tools and management analysis in order to:

• analyse the financial structure of biotechnology companies;
• analyse the role of the market stakeholders (companies, clients, government) in the biotechnology sector;
• design a simple marketing and pricing strategy for both novel and well-established biotechnological products;
• apply state-of-art business and revenue models for different product / service combinations and the necessary skills and tools to do so;
• develop a feasible business proposition to initiate, manage and commercialise biotechnological products/services at to the most suitable industrial scale.

Assumed Knowledge:
Bachelor in Biotechnology, Biobased Science or Economic field including quantitative courses regarding general principle of bioprocess design