Summary: | Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2017. === Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. === Includes bibliographical references (pages 96-103). === Cellular agriculture is an emerging field to develop in-vitro agricultural products. Despite overwhelming public attention towards the field's trajectory, there are significant research hurdles to overcome in order to validate scalable applications. These challenges, referring to the translational development of cell lines, serum-free media, cell-scaffolds, and bioreactor designs with regulatory and market assessment efforts, require new models for industry collaboration. The Open-Innovation Network Map was used to prioritize key collaboration networks to address the translational challenges of cellular agriculture, and three in-depth case studies from open-source models, big-science collaborations, and pre-competitive consortia were evaluated. Nine best practices to support open innovation across translational development were surfaced: Open-Source Models I OpenCompute Foundation, a community for open-source data center hardware designs, highlights the focus on: (1) the modularization of biological parts, equipment and protocols to encourage reproducibility, (2) the scalability of proof-of-concepts through industry participation, and (3) the self-assembly of industry clusters to initiate standardization. Big-Science Collaborations I The Human Genome Project, a large-scale collaboration to complete the sequencing of the human genome, exhibits attributes of successful research-intensive organizations, such as: (4) the centralization of leadership in distributed networks, and (5) policies to increase data-sharing frequency. Pre-competitive Consortia I SEMATECH, a semi-conductor manufacturing consortium established to address bottlenecks in the product development process, reveals that: (6) a crisis is critical for industry cohesion, (7) investment in innovation hubs increases translatability across stakeholders, (8) 'honest brokers' should be created to promote trust, and (9) feedback loops with end-users are critical to test market applications for new scientific advancements. The building of cellular agriculture's communities, channels, and technologies with appropriate open innovation models can enable stakeholders to collaborate and maintain a competitive edge. The conclusions of the thesis represent a convergence point among industry, academia and policy to discuss how to best shape and execute open innovation efforts in the future. === by Kevin Ka-Chun Yuen. === S.M. in Engineering and Management
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