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How Can We Drive More Success in Bio-Inspired Design? Ben Morgan

In 2012, Dosier started bioMASON®, a biotechnology start-up based in North Carolina, after formulating a recipe for lab grown bricks using a mixture of sand, calcium chloride, urea, water and Sporosarcina pasteurii, a calcite precipitating bacteria. Creating solid bricks without the need for heat treatment is a significant improvement on traditional production techniques, which accounted for 8% of all global CO2 emissions in 2018 [13]. BioMASON®’s message is clear: “greener building materials.” Providing benefits to a genuine, quantifiable problem attracted early stage investors, and start-up/small business awards delivered essential funding and exposure. BioMASON® is part of a collective of “greener building material” start-ups looking to enter an established market with a new product, which is often the case for bio-designers. Dosier’s experiences can provide valuable business execution insights for biomimicry proponents. BioMASON®’s message of sustainability has allowed Dosier to develop a very promising and exciting business, but the next stage of bioMASON®’s development must now consider how factors such as material regulation, supply chains, manufacturability, and cost can allow the bioinspiration to create value in the construction industry.

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Goldenburg [14] reports that new products in an established market have a higher probability of failure, and coming from a biotechnology background to tackle a construction problem is an ambitious challenge. If a product doesn’t fulfil key performance and aesthetic characteristics, then it cannot compete against current materials. The Brick Development Association in the UK (https://brick.org.uk) pointed out that a customer’s main concern is appearance. If the brick doesn’t look pleasing, then it will rarely be used to build homes. BioMASON®’s future now depends on its ability to translate technical success to a market. If scalability can be achieved in 2020 and the cost of their product can compete with current materials, then it is likely that bioMASON® will be a biologically inspired design providing decreased carbon emissions within the construction industry. Conversely, if it is unable to address key market and business concerns, it will invite questions regarding the integration of BIDs into business.

Terrapin Bright Green and Harbec Academia is a large source of bio-inspired designs, with nearly half of all projects in Jacobs’ database being directly or indirectly