Team:TUDelft/Entrepreneurship

PHOCUS

Entrepreneurship

Throughout the project, it was investigated how we could transfer our biopesticide PHOCUS from the lab to the real world. To do this successfully, we considered the local context in which we are innovating by talking to people that were affected by desert locust swarms. This way, we learned how these people live and what they value. Furthermore, we have involved the end-users through every design cycle. A full description of our stakeholder approach and implications of the involvement of stakeholders for the design of PHOCUS can be found in Stakeholder approach and Story. These insights were complemented with multiple analyses regarding the customer and its unmet needs, the product (including a.o. a risk-benefit analysis) and the company (including a.o. the project plan, responsible innovation, manufacturing, distribution, patenting and potential funding). Using the acquired knowledge from these analyses, we derived a business plan to commercialize PHOCUS. We obtained feedback on our ideas by Venture Capitalist Alexander Ribbink, former COO of TomTom. Finally, our business plan was pitched to a potential investor, who showed great interest in investing in further research to develop PHOCUS.