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From 2012e.igem.org

Project Overview

In an ordinary context, an asset is a useful or valuable thing, person, or quality—one that tremendously contributes towards an end goal. In finance, an asset is property owned by a company that retains innate value. Here at Arizona State University, we believe that the definitions are one and the same. The Biotech industry faces one of the highest failed venture rates in the United States. One in five thousand drug biotech startups fail to move beyond regulation and from there, only one-third will ever break even in profits. This problem is particularly endemic in social ventures, as funding is difficult to receive and maintain. As such, the Arizona State SynBio Entrepreneurship Team (ASSET) seeks to address these problems by analyzing past ventures as case studies and the implications of current business practices to produce a business model that capably addresses questions of organizational high performance and how socially focused synthetic biology companies might succeed in today’s climate.