iGEM Team UNSW

UNSW iGEM created a global business plan initiative, where they will create a business plan scaffold that can be utilised by anyone across the globe despite not knowing anything about business. In addition to using their business plan scaffold as a basis to write our own business plan, they also scheduled a video call to talk us through several problems we might have. As we have never written a business plan before, UNSW iGEM patiently went through everything a business plan should have via the video call and how we need to write it in relation to our project.
In the beginning, when we received their first draft for the business scaffold, we felt that some of the items mentioned were too specific to be used globally. One of the biggest challenges in using the global scaffold, was the significant differences between policies and regulations of each country. Just in Australia and Taiwan alone, there were many differences that can affect how we each write our business plans. When we mentioned that we were going to enter our products into National Health Insurance (NHI) in Taiwan to reduce the costs, they advised us to consider further reducing costs by partnering with manufacturers. They also said that unlike the situation in Taiwan where companies are free to consider applying for NHI, the situation is slightly different in Australia. Most medical products have to be approved by Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme (PBS) in order to be competitive in the market. By sharing the different policies and regulations, UNSW iGEM was able to tweak their business scaffold to further accomodate everyone’s needs.
One of the problems we encountered was that we had two distinct products, a live therapeutic drug and a bio-sensing device and we were unable to write them together in one business plan. UNSW iGEM advised us to keep our two products in one business plan and specifically write a business model for each.