BIO-TIC Draft Roadmaps on Industrial Biotechnology

Despite the major drivers for its application in tackling some of the huge modern global societal challenges, such as climate change and dwindling fossil fuel resources, several hurdles continue to hamper the full exploitation of Industrial Biotechnology’s (IB) potential today.

The BIO-TIC project is “a solutions approach” centred on an extensive exercise comprehensively examining these many innovation hurdles in IB across Europe and formulating action plans and recommendations to overcome them.
For that purpose, three roadmaps are being developed. The current version (April 2014) is the second draft of the roadmaps and is based on literatures study, more than 60 interviews with experts and on the information collected through 8 regional workshops. The final roadmaps (to be available in July 2015) will show the relationship between potential market developments, R&D needs, regulatory and non-technological aspects impacting on IB innovation. The BIO-TIC roadmaps will serve to highlight these areas and formulate action plans on how the various stakeholders can work together to overcome the major current and future issues that hamper the huge potential that IB for Europe to be realised.

The three bio-Roadmaps are:

• The market roadmap relates to current markets for a selection of five IB business cases for Europe, and market projections extending to 2030.
• The technological roadmap aims to gain insight into the R&D related hurdles that are impeding the full realization of Europe’s IB market potential in 2030. In addition, the roadmap seeks to set priorities in terms of R&D and other actions to overcome the R&D hurdles.
• The non-technological roadmap aims to identify regulatory and non-technological hurdles that may inhibit IB innovation towards identified market opportunities in the market roadmap.