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We ran a half-day virtual Project Planning workshop with 6 leading food brands to help Imperial College London, Quadram Institute and John Innes Centre apply for a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) grant to commercialise cutting-edge research to benefit public health.
Imperial College London’s Centre for Translational Nutrition and Food Research, Quadram Institute and John Innes Centre have been awarded a UKRI/BBSRC Seeding Award Fund to rapidly translate research outcomes into the food system. The research – had shown how a naturally-occurring genetic mutation in peas, leading to a different type of starch, could impact energy and glucose homeostasis in humans, and contribute to the prevention of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
After having successfully brought together 24 organisations from the entire food value chain to accelerate research translation into new food product through the Imperial Food Hack 2020, Imperial College London, Quadram Institute and John Innes Centre asked us to help with organising Roadmap Planning workshop with partner companies from across the food value chain as part of a UKRI – BBSRC Follow-on funding to commercialise their research and launch food products to benefit UK public health in the next two years.
Studio Zao organised a remote workshop with 6 food brands and 3 leading academic institutions using remote collaboration tool Miro and videoconferencing app Zoom.
Due to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, we adopted fully-remote management of the preparation process.
Once we successfully built a portfolio of proposals from each partner, we proceeded with building a collaborative online dashboard with all partners’ proposals, project plans and funding requirements.
We designed a workshop to cover only the essential components of the grant application framework – User Engagement and Business Development, Individual Project Plans, Resource Requirements and Assumptions about other partners’ workstreams.
We ran the half-day workshop remotely with commercial and academic partners from the following institutions:
Throughout the workshop, partners took turns to communicate their project plans and clarify any assumptions they have about others’ workstreams. In real-time, we edited the virtual dashboard to reflect their discussion and create an integrated roadmap for commercialization.
Throughout the journey, we identified 3 success factors for running successful remote Roadmapping workshops:
By the end of the workshop, partners were able to align on their new product development plans and understand how their roadmaps can integrate with each other to form one coherent timeline.
The workshop catalysed a negotiation period to define detailed funding requirements and commercial agreements with academic institutions.
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