Year: 2008-09

Company: Life Technologies

Liaison(s): Rodney Turner

Life Technologies is the result of a merger that occurred in the fall of 2008 between two leading research tool companies; Applied Biosystems and Invitrogen. Life Technologies facili – tates scientific exploration by providing researchers with the necessary tools to advance bioscience and technology. Life Technologies’ customers do their work across the biological spectrum, from human disease research, to agricultural technol – ogy, to forensics. The company has historical annual sales of approximately $3.5 billion, employs 9,500 people, has a presence in more than 100 countries, and possesses a rapidly growing intellectual property estate of over 3,600 patents and exclusive licenses. This TMP, originally started by the Strategy & Business Development Group of Applied Biosystems, was charged with investigating trends in life science research. The goal of the TMP was to identify trends in life science research and provide Life Technologies with specific information about customer needs related to these trends. The first phase of the TMP focused on trend identification through secondary research and discussions with the Life Technologies Corporate Development team. During the process of trend identification, research areas were segmented into different customer groups based on research goals, methodologies, and techniques. The team identified trends in four research areas: epigenetic disease biomarkers, ex vivo biomarker discovery systems, rare cell detection and isolation, and synthetic biology applications for microbial consortia research. The final phase of the project focused on primary research via interviews with key opinion leaders in these research areas. These key opinion leaders provided information about specific barriers to progress that the team synthesized into customer requirements that Life Technologies can address in the future.