Year: 2012-13

Company: Life Tech

Liaison(s): Vicki Singer, Rodney Turner

Life Technologies Corporation is a global biotechnology tools company serving over 75,000 customers in more than 160 countries worldwide. Through constant innovation, Life Technologies is dedicated to improving the human condition. The company prides itself on consistently being at the forefront of scientific discovery, with novel technology development and commercialization. It has over 10,000 employees, approximately 50,000 products and over 4,000 patents and exclusive licenses worldwide. Through the Applied Biosystems® and Ion Torrent™ brands, Life Technologies provides innovative equipment to labs around the world. Life Technologies also provides a broad range of consumables through worldrenowned brands including Invitrogen™, GIBCO®, TaqMan®, Novex®, Molecular Probes®, and Ambion ®. Life Technologies commits itself to providing products that enable lab functions in the basic, applied, and medical sciences. It is currently interested in expanding its market within the applied sciences sector, and wishes to learn about opportunities in water testing. Water is an invaluable natural resource that is vital to all living beings. Proper handling, monitoring, treating and conservation are critical to protecting this essential resource. Water testing technologies are necessary to ensure safety of water usage and release into the environment. A variety of consumers with different needs makes up the water testing marketplace. They include private users, specialized laboratories, government agencies, utilities companies and industrial manufacturers. Life Technologies’ overarching goal for the team is to gain an understanding of the unmet needs of these consumers. The team conducted primary and secondary market research to examine the water testing marketplace. Interviews with users of water testing products from different industries and organizations were found to be particularly valuable. The team also learned about regulatory guidelines in specific areas of interest. The information from these efforts allowed the team to perform a market segmentation analysis and identify unmet needs and opportunities. Equipped with an understanding of the unmet needs for different water testing market segments, the team provided Life Technologies with recommendations on which markets to target and how existing Life Technologies products and technologies could be leveraged to meet market needs.