Lessons from Industrial Biotechnology | #1 The biggest mistake in biotechnology is not choosing the wrong technology. It is asking the wrong question.

One lesson has followed me throughout my career—from recombinant proteins in duckweed to microbial fermentation and alternative proteins. When a project struggles, the first instinct is often to optimize the technology.
Increase expression.
Improve the strain.
Adjust the fermentation conditions.
Screen more variants.
But over time, I realized something surprising. Many biotechnology projects are not limited by the technology they use. They are limited by the assumptions they start with. I’ve seen teams spend months improving protein yield, only to discover that purification became the real bottleneck. I’ve seen impressive laboratory results fail to translate into industrial reality because scalability, process economics, or regulatory constraints had not been considered early enough.
In biotechnology, solving the wrong problem exceptionally well is still solving the wrong problem. This is one of the reasons why industrial biotechnology fascinates me. Success rarely depends on a single breakthrough. It emerges from understanding how biology, engineering, manufacturing, downstream processing, economics, and sustainability interact as one system.
The most valuable question is often not:
« How can we improve this technology? »
Instead, it is:
« Are we solving the problem that truly matters? »
As our industry embraces AI, synthetic biology, precision fermentation, and increasingly sophisticated engineering tools, I believe our greatest competitive advantage will not simply be building better technologies. It will be asking better questions. Because great scientists optimize experiments. Great R&D teams optimize systems.

What biological or technological assumption do you think our industry should challenge more often?
I’d love to hear your perspective.

#IndustrialBiotechnology#Bioprocessing#SyntheticBiology#Fermentation#Innovation