If you want to replace livestock with urban transport, you invent the car. If you want to make it impossible for the USSR to destroy your military communications, you invent the internet. If you want to create an ecosystem of apps controlled by finger swipes, you invent the iPhone.
In those examples, Daimler-Benz, DARPA and Apple hit upon tools we didn’t know we wanted. But what about the opposite –s if the capability to make investors rich or save lives exists but the manufacturing industry just can’t find the business case?
That’s what a group of US engineers, bioscientists and medical companies faced when they decided to realise the potential in manufacturing replacement human organs.
We’ve already 3D printed organic structures at the research level and we can create precise digital models for livers, bones or kidneys in a computer. How can we put them together to make it affordable, elevating the quality of life for millions with diseases that affect specific parts of the body like diabetes or renal failure?
To find out, the Advanced Regenerative Medicine Institute (AMRI) was born (https://www.armiusa.org). Founded with US80m from the US Department of Defence, ARMI is described as a pre-competitive hub. Participants working together and sharing results and IP is the only way to make the technology affordable and scalable because no single body or researcher has the expertise, equipment, capital or risk tolerance to go it alone.
Its purpose is to advance the (bio)technology, make it financially viable and then – hey presto – we’ll have a thriving 3D printed organs industry.
But while the philosophy of an industry-generating research/business hub is sound, we live in a world of jealously guarded commercial assets and trigger-finger litigation. How can a group of people or companies – some who’ll be competing for future spoils – collaborate seamlessly enough for the greater good? How do you set up the legal structure and carve up the responsibilities and advantages that emerge?
The Advanced Timber Hub, headquartered at the University of Queensland, was funded by commercial partners as well as the federal government through the Australian Research Council. Worth $18m over five years, it was established to further the use of timber in the mid rise building market, a substitute for steel participants think will mean lower construction costs and healthier, low-carbon buildings.
Every pre-competitive industry collaboration needs its big question. ARMI’s is to commercialise 3D printed human organs and tissues but Advanced Timber Hub’s is even more concise – for timber to occupy 20 percent of the market in Australian mid rise buildings (it’s currently around 1 percent).
Research Hub Director Professor Keith Crews calls the Hub a body inside the university that administers the ARC grant and ‘a connecting point between industry and academia’. “There’s a signed agreement that we’ll run it the way the ARC wants and our partners sign up with a collaborative research agreement. It sets the framework for how the organisation will function in terms of governance structure and the way IP will be shared.”
Crews talks about multiple rounds and schedules of KPIs and reporting that needs to be done back to the ARC (‘we’ve got millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money – there’s a high degree of accountability and transparency’), but essentially says he and his staff run it like a cashflow positive company, doing everything an auditable for-profit operation does.
Work the problem
But if the formal structure sounds easy, getting members to work together can be another matter. The ARC Advance Timber Hub has over 30 projects and close to 50 partners, and although Crews says the whole process has been relatively painless, he articulates what we’re all thinking; “You can ask 35 companies to sign one agreement but each time a lawyer looks at it you can imagine what they do.”
We’re also not talking about companies in a given industry all moving in roughly the same direction, either. The Hub has economists, industrial psychologists, wood scientists, engineers, architects and even people assessing the interventions necessary for changes in government policy. “Our team is very diverse and very multidisciplinary,” Crews says.
One of the secrets to its success has been the deliberate and conscious design of the collaboration framework. From day one, the Hub held regular workshops and meetings with everyone to define and scope out projects, get everyone on board about what they were addressing and the KPIs to report to backers. “That’s what the hub’s all about,” Crews says, “seamless communication across the network.”
But when the point is to produce advances that will have a quantifiable commercial benefit that leads to a flourishing new industry, who’d want to share it with future competitors?
Sharing results will be different in every case, and it’s the sort of thing that’s normally hashed out at the agreement stage, but the reason to get involved in an industry/research hub will often be the slightly less tangible promise that it will change things for the better overall.
In ARMI’s case it’s to ease burdens like diabetes and heart disease. For the Advanced Timber Hub’s it’s to build better, smarter and use renewable materials, with knock-on effects like expanded regional employment and safer construction techniques.
As a university research program that’s publicly funded, most of what emerges is released into the public domain immediately, but Crews says specific findings might have particular restrictions before they can be shared through mechanisms like NDAs. “You might be first cab off the rank using IP for a specific period before we publish it so the industry is going to see the results you produce with it, and most member companies are comfortable with that,” he says.
But best of all, industry/research hubs work, and in very measurable ways. Benzo Lee, co-founder of Chinese box making equipment manufacturer Autoboxup, joined an industry hub to develop a new metal alloy, dividing the research among four other collaborators.
“It led to a breakthrough we all benefitted from, sharing the development cost and reducing individual risk,” he says. “One project received staged funding tied to specific milestones, and the second round of $100,000 was released when we showed a 30 percent increase in the efficiency of the prototype.”
He adds that the five participants pooled $500,000 (an amount none could afford alone) and developed a prototype in 24 months, a process that would normally take 36.
But once there, what then? You’ve done it, you’ve started an industry. Does everyone shake hands, switch off the hub’s phone number and website and start fiercely competing against former partners?
The endpoint is as varied as the original purpose. The ARC Advance Timber Hub (currently projected at six years from its 2022 inception) will simply see the ARC step back and assume the field it invested in is self sufficient and healthy. In other examples partner companies might sign further development or partnership deals of their own, employ researchers to further the work in-house, etc.
Philosophical approach
Industry/research hubs have a lot of fans. People we contacted for this story who’ve taken part in them were almost poetic in their responses.
Just some were ‘to truly invent an industry, you need the vision to see beyond the horizon, the courage to share the map, and the wisdom to navigate uncharted waters together’, ‘the key to success … is understanding that collective progress often precedes individual profitability’ and even ‘building a pre-competitive cluster is akin to choreographing a ballet – it demands an intricate balance between fostering cooperation and spurring competitive momentum.’
Indeed, someone else said the balance between cooperation and rivalry needs ‘constant attention’, with agreements setting clear boundaries to share resources and milestones.
Keeping the common mission in mind also helps defend against fragmentation of priorities – especially with a formal schedule of check-ins and catch ups. And for investors, patience is key – most people we asked cautioned that commercialisation takes longer and that investors should be ‘patient’.
Above all, everyone agrees the most important resource on the table is human, not facilities, equipment or even money. Mentorship is just as important a contribution as finance, and it’s the collective knowledge and ability that spurs creativity.
Capture that, and you might just be able to ask some contemporaries to join you, tap into funding (the ARC’s 2024-25 budget is $397.6m) and invent a whole new manufacturing industry yourself…