Episode 005 | February 7, 2022 | Duration: 22:04
Transcript
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated and lightly edited for clarity. It may contain minor errors.
Frederik: [00:00:00] All right, Robert, welcome to the podcast.
Robert: Thanks for having me.
Frederik: I’m excited to have you. Maybe you can share with the folks listening in, sort of what’s your life story? Where did you grow up? And why are you where you are today?
Robert: Yeah. Well, one thing when you’re working in startups, it’s all about quick iteration problem solving and taking in information and applying it really quickly.
So it’s always great to work with experts or subject matter experts in certain fields and getting their input, and then obviously want to put our best foot forward. As a Canadian, I grew up downtown Toronto in the big city. I really didn’t know anything about Nova Nordisk. It wasn’t a symbol of my childhood.
There’s probably other local Canadian companies that I would look at and know their logo. [00:01:00] Coming into this, it was definitely a fresh slate. And I think working with you, a green innovation group, helped me better understand the opportunity that we had in front of us and guide the direction we have when presenting our company to the Scandinavian market.
Throughout university, I was trying to find my way, a background in science, but it was not so big on the small scale of the laboratory. I was really about the big picture and seeing the world. And I went to a university called Western University. It’s in London, Ontario, Canada. They call it the world’s second best London.
One thing they really prioritized during my term there, in undergraduate studies was global education. So I was able to leverage a lot of funding and resources at Western to visit Poland, France, the Netherlands, and actually spending a year abroad in the [00:02:00] south of Germany. So I think that experience, global intercultural experience abroad really helped.
Kind of set me in the right direction for working with Genesis. And I think without that experience of that globalized mindset and understanding different environments, we may not have even been collaborating in Europe, for example. It’s interesting looking back how all things kind of piece together into one path.
Frederik: Yeah. And I think that some things that are also part of the entire region story is also Steven and Joe from Meta. Right. Who also kind of pushing you into that program that we were running with Matter. The health Tech innovation hub based out of Chicago.
Okay. And one thing that has really stuck with me is when I walk around with you in Copenhagen, you are reading science and you’re trying to understand the local culture. You’re trying your hand at Danish, which is an impossible language. So I’m also impressed by that sort of unwillingness to give up on something, even though it is completely impossible. No one learns Danish. So it feels as if there’s a lot of curiosity in you and in Genesis at large. Also, when I’m speaking to Luna or to Hash, that I find really inspiring that it’s kind of like a we can do anything attitude. And one thing that I’ve been curious about is when you were looking at this challenge at large, had you hoped that it would come to fruition the way it did?
Robert: Yeah, the way it happened is completely different than what we initially thought. As a startup, we have an inbound inbox in our email and people send us messages all the time about competitions, grants, awards, different partnerships, and we have to sift through. I think in this scenario, this came across my plate.
Luna told me, take it on and go do it and see what it’s about. I think that’s how my role’s evolved into that. And yeah, I think throughout university I gained experience doing pitch competitions and being on stage and I always get a little bit nervous, but yeah, I think it’s always really cool to see how our technology can help others and seeing [00:05:00] a commercial trajectory.
And when we first started the innovation challenge, it was very specific about can we replace devices for Novo Nordisk injection pens? But we took a step back after that initial pitch and thought, could we look at this more holistically and maybe think in a better way about how our technology could do even more than what was initially thought.
So when we first stepped into that, and I guess it was a Zoom call or Microsoft teams call at the time, we had no idea what the outcome would actually be,
Frederik: I think I remember initially the pitch was about taking the container food waste and turning that into something. And then as this process all sort of unfolded, you realized, hey, you have a huge organic waste output from your production sites. Let’s leverage that rather than the bits and pieces from the container and then the project sort of [00:06:00] developed. But if we are sticking to the agenda, then I wanted to talk about external corporate innovation and how you can do corporate innovation.
Through fast moving startups, even in these slow moving, quite incumbent industries like pharma MedTech, where we have a few giants that are sort of dominant in their spaces, in their own fields, and we don’t see much emergence of new superpowers the same way we do in the tech space where the tech dominance are sort of on the exchange. We don’t see the same kind of exchange in the MedTech space. So when we’re looking at external corporate innovation, what do you see as the main challenges in that [00:07:00] space? Now you’re representing the startups, you’ve been on the inside.
You know the corporates quite well. You also managed to do an external innovation collaboration project that succeeded. But what are the challenges?
Robert: Well, if you look at big pharmaceutical companies or biotech companies, there are these massive behemoths. Centralized with huge amounts of talent, very expensive infrastructure and equipment, and then patent portfolios to really protect their innovations.
So it totally makes sense why they have all of these moats working together to keep them around for hundreds of years, essentially. Then you have a smaller biotechnology company that’s trying to break into that scene. So you’re looking at one that has a limited amount of resources in a startup. And another company that has a massive amount of resources.
As a startup company, it’s really helpful to set a direction and then figure out what these customers want, what’s kind of the frontier of innovation. Sometimes you can lose track and [00:08:00] if you have blinders on, you could go in the completely wrong direction and then develop something that industry doesn’t actually want or need, or is very inconvenient.
So I think what’s critical is regardless if you’re a consumer, a B2B company, or a biotech, you really have to look at the market and talk to people and see what they want. And I think that’s what’s really helpful with these innovation challenges. You get unique insights that you would otherwise never have.
These are things you can’t just learn on Google. You can’t even really learn them on a Zoom call sometimes because you have to be in person. You have to see it for yourself, and you have to develop the relationships. That’s what’s critical and I think that’s what the innovation Challenge framework actually set us up really well for.
Frederik: I also think building the trust, right? Because as you say, there’s a vast amount of different moats that are built up. There’s IP portfolio structures, there’s policies and internal regulations and [00:09:00] all of this. But there’s also incredibly smart people that are passionate.
And that’s another part of it that I don’t think it’s very probable that you go through five or eight years of education within the field, and you start working on a track of innovation or research and development without developing a certain kind of passion. At least that’s what I’ve experienced with the major pharmaceutical firms that I’ve worked with. I never feel like I’m anywhere near being the smartest person in the room. And to me that’s quite rewarding. But then we are also seeing these challenges that you’re addressing that when we are looking at innovation, you really need to innovate for target market, and most corporate innovation that we see taking place.
Fails to [00:10:00] develop the time and resources that’s necessary to do just that, because in its essence, a corporate is actually designed to kill good ideas, right? And maximize profitability and narrow in and focus on owning the skills for what’s actually providing the profitability of the company.
So it makes sense that a profitable company is not necessarily innovative by nature, but then again, those huge patent portfolios and IP portfolios kind of serve as a contrast thesis to that, right? Because that is the product of innovation. That’s the product of original thinking, but it’s not necessarily applied in a business context yet.
So that’s why we have sort of an interesting field for us to explore, you know, how might we [00:11:00] take some of the existing innovation capabilities that are lying dormant in so many brilliant startups where you have passionate teams that have great products and great concepts, and deploy them with corporate partners that have the financial and scientific muscle and the market connection to actually finance the early stage development, the prototyping, the piloting.
And the initial deployment. So yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of what are the challenges? But I also remember as part of the new Nordisk Innovation Challenge, how crucial that trust building was. And there was a first day when you and Hash arrived to Denmark and you were completely jet lagged.
And I just remember as a facilitator that, you know, this is never gonna work. The chemistry was just not there on the first day. And then we end up flipping it over and building good energy and you and Hash did an incredible job. Both changing your own mindset slightly to encompass what the other engineers were seeing.
But we also managed to build on that energy for the remainder of the program. And then it turned into an incredibly fruitful collaboration where it seemed like there was a lot of cross pollination of ideas and so many things happening. But it did take that trust building and I think that trust would have never been possible to build on a Zoom call.
Right. You needed to be there in person and you needed to talk to those engineers for a couple of hours in order to get on the same page and also bridge the culture gap. I think because Danes have a certain way of communicating that it’s not the same as the rest of the world. And we can pride ourselves with that because we have our own troll [00:13:00] language and then we translate to English and we’re really good at English. But it’s not always exactly the same. Right. And there’s some cultural barriers that may seem quite invisible, but are actually there. And I just remember you doing a really good job at juggling that difference and figuring ways of making that work, to the advantage of the collaboration rather than being an inhibitor for shared growth.
Robert: And I’ll tell you kind of the tricks of how that also worked out in addition to your facilitation. So yes, as part of the innovation challenge, we were paired with device engineers.
Those who think about how do we design devices for sustainability? But as a startup making materials, it was really helpful to have an expert in the polymer space from Novo Nordisk to sit in on our discussions. And that’s how we found and added [00:14:00] Jesper to our group. Big shout out to Jesper. Super great guy and subject matter expert of polymers. But then we thought about what about users? What do patients care about? So we ended up looping in an anthropologist. And that’s kind of the approach we took where we realized we had a certain skill set as part of our mentor team, but we needed additional subject matter experts to give us a full holistic picture of what’s actually needed and what’s necessary.
Because as a startup, we know ourselves really well. Novo Nordisk knows themselves internally really well. But then we had to figure out how do we kind of find the right puzzle piece and match? And it’s not something you can do in one day. It takes time. Building trust, spending time with others internally in an organization and then hearing different perspectives.
Denmark is all about really consensus and building that rapport with people. So [00:15:00] we try our best to make sure that we talk to stakeholders across the organization.
Frederik: And you’ve done an incredible job. You know, when you speak to anyone in the Scandinavian region, they know about the Genecis project.
So when you’re looking at it, I mean, now you’ve brought some samples with you that to me are incredibly convincing. Right? This is what’s actually possible to do with the Genecis technology. Maybe you can just briefly explain what the technology actually is all about?
Robert: Yeah, so essentially what we do is we upcycle forms of organic waste into these biopolymers, and that’s done through a fermentation process. So instead of using sugars to brew up beer, we’re able to take organic waste such as food waste and use our bacteria to make these biopolymers. So what we’ll produce is generally pellets, which then you [00:16:00] can form into different applications.
These happen to be what are called dog bones, so they’re used for mechanical testing to test different properties of the materials. But essentially you could make them into any types of products that would replace traditional petroleum plastics. So our core technology is generally utilizing food waste from municipalities.
So think of items you would put in a green bin or big companies would also dispose of as well. But when we engage with Novo Nordisk, we thought of what waste streams could we actually valorize internally? And as you previously alluded to, there’s a huge amount of waste generated in the insulin production process.
So we can create that closed materials loop within Novo by upcycling this insulin production waste into these biomaterials for their devices.
Frederik: That’s amazing. And I think it’s also sort of this closing the loop that right now Novo is using a fossil-based plastic in order to make these injection pens that diabetes patients use to inject the insulin they need to stimulate their lack of insulin in their own hormone production.
And what you’re basically enabling Novo to do here is take one of the waste products from their API, API production, so the active product ingredient production, and turn that into the compound that is the basis of the material that the patients can later use to inject themselves.
And I mean, if we actually manage to close that loop, then that’s like a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale style Danish adventure story that we can tell our grandchildren about. [00:18:00] I think that’s a really amazing potential, and having been such a big part of this collaboration as you have been, you’ve been to Denmark a couple of times in the past years, even.
With a COVID situation where I feel it’s safe to say that we have adapted to virtual meetings, but still that physical trust building is essential. What are your hopes and dreams for the future?
Robert: Well, I would love to see us collaborate with Novo Nordisk to take this technology to the next level.
When you think about Novo Nordisk and Kalundborg, Denmark, where all of their insulin is produced currently, it’s a Bioindustry hub and they have amazing experts when it comes to setting up fermentation processes and developing technology. So if we could leverage that skill set internally, potentially leverage some of the [00:19:00] resources as well, and then work together, bringing in external technology.
We could accelerate our pathway to the marketplace and then develop a solution that benefits Novo Nordisk really well. And one thing we really realized is it’s impossible to design new products and devices before getting the material. It’s really important to start off with a new material, understand what it can do and all of its potential, and then think about new ways we can design for circularity.
So I think that’s a critical approach too, and we definitely realize, and a lot of people internally are realizing we have to think a lot differently than before when it comes to implementing new technologies. It’s not as easy as some previous solutions that are already out there in the marketplace.
If it was that easy, they would already be in place. So we really have to kind. There’s so many great stakeholders in Novo Nordisk group who have been pushing for sustainability and have set that vision and direction. And we need that [00:20:00] momentum and energy to go to the next level with them. It really is a partnership, leveraging our own expertise in our unique field, and then leveraging that broad expertise and the resources of a big successful company. That’s kind of the pair we have to win together
Frederik: For sure. And I think, again, Jesper is one of these subject matter experts on polymers in Novo Nordisk. They have thousands of employees that know a lot about all different kinds of things.
But since a material like a polymer is something you purchase in the market and you put it in the machine and it just has to work, there’s not a lot of folks inside Novo Nordisk that knows as much about polymers as Jesper does. Because it’s not what Novo Nordisk does, essentially. They’re quite a different pharmaceutical company.
So I also think that it’s sort of part of the points in a [00:21:00] successful corporate to startup innovation effort, is to be able to form a knowledge alliance between the two organizations where one plus one becomes three, right? Where essentially the sharing that you have had with Jesper and his team has been an addition to their work and the sharing that they have brought you, has been an addition to your work also outside of that collaboration for both of you.
So I’ve been witnessing an immense amount of growth just from this collaboration alone and a lot of excitement. So yeah, I wish you all the best for the partnership and I just want to thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing your dreams and your story.
Robert: Oh, thanks as well. Thanks. [00:22:00]