Radix Botanicals wins Action Lab Competition

Radix Botanicals, a research team of Wageningen UR, received first prize during the awards ceremony of the Action Lab competition, organised by the BE-Basic Business and Innovation Centre (BE-BIC). Five teams of researchers participated in the Action Lab and followed an intensive program to prepare their product development plans. The winning team presented a business pitch about their new technology for the discovery of plant enzymes that can be used to produce natural flavours by fermentation, and received a prize of €20.000, to help promote the further development of their ideas. Two other teams, MicroLife Solutions and DAB (Delft Advanced Renewables) won an Incentive Prize of €10.000.

The Award ceremony took place at the Van der Valk hotel in Leusden and is part of the BE-BIC valorisation activities of BE-Basic Foundation, aimed at researchers and scientists who want to explore the business side of developing the biobased economy. The Action Lab program hosted two 2-day workshops with additional training from June until September 2015, by business coaches Hans Le Fever and Math Kohnen.

Chairman of the jury Herman van Wechem was pleased about the results of the initiative: “During Action Lab, the researchers learned in a very efficient way what is needed to transform a good idea into a business plan for a future company, and experienced that business development is quite different from scientific research and development. This will help them tremendously in the development of their future plans. Based on the success of this year’s Action Lab, there will be a next one organised in 2016.” The winning teams will present an update about their venture plans during the ECO-BIO 2016 conference in Rotterdam due to held next March.