The Science Behind Nature-Inspired Innovation | Ep. 89 [Sidney Rostan]

What if the next breakthrough in AI, engineering, or product innovation isn't something humans invent, but something nature has already perfected? In this episode of Industry Ignited, Dr. Leeanne Aguilar sits down with Sidney Rostan, Founder and CEO of Bioxegy, France's leading biomimicry R&D design office, to explore how companies are using nature-inspired solutions to solve some of industry's most complex challenges. From aerospace and automotive to manufacturing and artificial intelligence, Sidney reveals how biomimicry is helping organizations improve performance, reduce costs, create patents, and unlock entirely new approaches to innovation.

Sidney shares the realities of bringing biomimicry from academia into the corporate world, the challenges of convincing engineers and executives to think differently, and why nature may hold the key to more efficient technologies and smarter AI systems. Whether you're an innovation leader, engineer, entrepreneur, or simply curious about the future of technology, this conversation will change the way you think about nature, problem-solving, and the next generation of industrial breakthroughs.

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Transcript

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 0:06

What if the next major breakthrough in materials, energy efficiency, or AI isn't something we invent from scratch, but something nature has already optimized over millions of years, just waiting for us to translate it? Welcome to Industry Ignited, the podcast where we spotlight the leaders, technologies, and strategies shaping the future of industry and innovation. I'm your host, Dr. Lianne Aguilar. And today I'm joined by Sydney Rostin, founder and CEO of Bioxy, France's leading biomimicry RD design office. Sydney, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Thanks. Hi, uh, thanks for having me, Lianne.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 0:40

Yeah, you're welcome. I'm excited to get into the conversation. So, Sydney, people often hear biomimicry and think about copying nature. How do you define biomimicry in a way that resonates with RD leaders, especially those focused on performance and results?

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Yeah, um, biomimicry could be defined as the research and development approach, which consists in drawing inspiration from nature's best designs. So that means the sophistication of materials, mechanisms, chemical processes, and also in some cases, cognitive behaviors. And it's not just about copying for the sake of it, it's getting inspiration from. So understanding how the underlying mechanisms that are and properties that are found in nature that are very optimized and sophisticated, and then can kind of doing a retro engineering process to see how it is feasible in something that is in an industrial scale with cost constraints and with production constraints. And that's the real definition of biomilcry, doing something that is feasible, getting inspiration and transposing it to a feasible bio-inspired technology. That's the definition I would give it.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 1:49

And how do you know where to look first?

SPEAKER_00 1:51

I would say most of the time we use algorithms that we have internally developed. So we look for words, specific words. If I, for example, let's say I want to look into optical systems that are uh that can work within fog, for example. I would look for words like fog and optical, etc., etc., and deep dive into biological papers. So people that have been studying animals, plants, insects for years and years and years, and that will have put in their papers very specific wording, and we have to have developed algorithms that help us to do so. Then, of course, there is the experience speaking, and that's part of the, I think, the added value of bioxegy is that we've been working so long on some topics that we have gathered a huge database that is very broad with kind of tree structures of uh, you know, hey, you have a topic or challenge, here are the different models in biology that you can look into, etc. etc. And then there is also the the terrain aspect of it. And the terrain aspect is that sometimes we have to pick up our phone and call the biologist to say, okay, we have a topic and we want to know where we can look in. And these people, they will also speak from experience. Putting these three things together is the best way we have found to be quick and to find to do biological investigation very fast. But again, the the real expertise of biomimicry is not that much identifying the biological model, is being able to transpose it and transpose it into something that is actually feasible. So this biomimetic retro engineering is the key to what is, in my sense, biomimicry. How we how what is biomimicry and what's the core uh expertise of biomimicry?

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 3:38

Yeah. So it's really diving into that academic research. It's looking into papers and seeing what people have identified as far as like the abilities and capabilities in nature, and then it's taking that and applying it to you know the real world challenges in order to create feasible solutions.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

And applying it fast and in a cost-efficient way, because we have clients and clients they won't pay us for 10 years of academic research.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 4:02

Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Now you discovered biomimicry while working in the automotive industry in Germany, then founded Bioxy in 2018. What was the moment you realized this can't stay in academia? An industry needs this now.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

So I was at the beginning of my career there, discovered biomimicry. I had never heard of biomimicry before. I mean, I was a business school graduate, so wasn't an engineer. I hadn't heard of biomimicry and biology, etc., was very strange for me. Discovered biomimicry back then in Germany. The Germans they do a lot of biomimicry for materials purposes. So, for example, lightweight design, uh a little bit also chemistry, of course. Um, and I became passionate around this uh topic. And the idea itself of biomimicry is very, you know, it's it's a sexy idea. Well, nature has been around for millions of years or even billions of years, kind of something that is obvious around this idea. But I think the tilt happened when I thought to myself, well, if it's so obvious than that, why come that we do not have much more success stories out there? So, of course, they have been some success stories over the years. Think of very well-known and very uh notorious example of uh the Shinkanzen train, high-speed train. It's a bullet train in um in Japan that has been designed following a Kingfisher's design and beak design, which is kind of smooth and that helps go through tunnels uh at high speed. So there were some success stories. But despite that, biomimicry was far from being used at its full potential and was very far from being used and being democratized. So I actually looked around a little bit and uh thought to myself, okay, starting with France, starting with Europe, are there some companies that industrial companies, I mean, that actually use biomimicry? And I've heard of some examples as well, some engineering teams from time to time at Airbus, at L'Oreal for cosmetics applications, for example, that have been using biomimicry, but it was, you know, some isolated projects, not something on a whole democratized and systematic way. Um and so then I also quickly understood that biomimicry was actually something that had some success in uh academia, so uphill science. We're talking about research centers, universities, labs, etc., etc., especially, for example, in the US. So we're talking about Caltech, Virginia Tech, Stanford, MIT, such uh universities and research centers, of course, NASA, for example, in aeronautics and aerospace, but it wasn't that much used when it comes to uh downhill science and corporate research and development. Also in Europe, but it's the same in the US, it's the same in Japan, etc. I also quickly observed that most of the time what you could find was associations, you know, so passionate groups of people that were kind of evangelists around that. So they're kind of doing some civilization work, both talking about uh biomimicry, being passionate about that, uh having dinners or um writing books, um, frugal stuff, I would say. And I'm not saying that in an arrogant way, because it it was useful actually to have these people around, but it wasn't yeah, on an industrial scale. And that was kind of the tilt where I thought, okay, somehow there is a gap here, and there is a need for an actual RD expert that could bring biomimicry to the table in a very credible way where it would be used in a systematic way for industrial corporation downhill. And that's how I got the idea of Bioexegy, which is if I track back, it's kind of obvious, but back then it was not that obvious. And it was also very difficult, very adventurous to think that that 10 years ago, and I founded the company eight and a half years ago.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 8:01

Okay, so you just really saw this need and this gap, especially in Europe for RD in the corporate space. And so, you know, took that opportunity and and dove on, dove on in. Yeah. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

That's how it happened.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 8:13

So in the early years, what was your biggest credibility hurdle with large industrial players? Like getting them to take biomimicry seriously as an engineering discipline, and not a nice idea.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

The first hurdle was myself. I mean, as I said, I was uh I'm not an engineer, I'm just a business school graduate. And I was young, I was 24. So as you can imagine, knocking on some industrial corporations' door, let's say, for example, Safron, a big aeronautics player in France, and telling them, well, guys, biomimicry could be useful in order to reduce the weight of a landing gear, reduce uh wear and tear of a specific component within your landing system, proof tribology uh um characteristics, for example. Let's look into nature and see what nature has to say about that. Well, first hurdle is that who's that who's that guy? Um he's not an engineer, like he's alone. Um, and he's saying that while he can bring us breakthrough technologies and help us improve our year-long or decade-long uh expertise on landing gears. So the first hurdle was myself. Second hurdle was, of course, biomimicry itself. It's also something that is very difficult to convince an engineer that has been working 20 years or 30 years on the same components with the same conventional approach of engineering to tell him and convince him that nature might have a better solution and might be more equipped or more sophisticated or more sustainable. It's kind of a there is kind of a um challenge for people to be aware enough and to be open-minded enough to understand that nature is not just a frugal domain, it's not, it's it's actually sophisticated. This comes because I think that over the years of industrial revolutions started 250 years ago, um the human species with the progressive industrial revolutions and progress has conquered seas, has conquered territories, has conquered skies. And we have learned that we were very intelligent species and that we had lots of means to create great technologies and great industries. But this somehow created kind of a distance with reality and maybe a little bit arrogant approach, which is to say we human do everything better than nature itself. And as you can imagine, this is something deconstructing this approach and uh bringing a little bit of humility around that was the second hurdle, which is is biomimicry credible enough for me as an industrial corporation to actually bring me added value. So this was the second hurdle, and actually, this is a hurdle we are we we we face still today. So it's still ongoing for us, and we still need to find the means to convince. But now, over the time, we are better equipped to do so for two reasons. First reason is of course we have experience. So let's say an industrial corporation comes to me and say, I want to reduce the the sound and vibrations of my washing machine. Bike CG has worked so much around vibration and uh reducing noise, so noise, vibration, harshness topics with biomimicry. So, how does nature bring down vibration, bring down noise and isolate from noise? We have we have been working on that in the train industry, in the airplane industry, in the car industry. It's way easier for us to convince and uh to have the right wording and right success for success stories, right example to convince new customer, even if it's it's not in the same use case and the same industry. So that's the first solution, I would say. The second one is of course we have a client portfolio. And if a company sees that we actually have been working for years now with a competitor or with a company name that is well known, they'll say, okay, well, maybe not only is Bioxy credible as a company in terms of expert expertise, but second, well, the biomimicry is relevant because let's say I'm Renault in the uh car industry, and I see my direct competitor, Stellantis, working with Bioxy. Well, I'll just uh give the conclusion that, well, um maybe it's it's worth it. Um over time it has become easier, but still we face a little bit of hurdle today.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 12:42

Yeah, no, I get that. So you mentioned first was the the hurdle of your your uh credibility because you had the business background and not necessarily the science background. And then it's the science itself, which is the biomimicry, just getting people to really look at that and take it seriously as a solution to um you know corporate and business needs and real world needs, not just um, you know, a conceptual thing or something that you find in nature. It makes sense. I mean, nature is highly specialized and technical. You know, if you work with nature, if you work with science and physics and to discover the secrets and how things are done, I would think there are a lot of solutions in there.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Thinking of that, there is, I think there is one more and one last big hurdle for us is the technologic readiness level, TRL. So the level of maturity in which a technology is actually placed within TRL zero, which is very, very low degree of maturity in research, so exploration level, and TRL 9, which is actually the product is on the market and is being produced. Most of the time, biomimicry is seen as something that is so much disruptive that uh it belongs to uh lower degrees of maturity and budgets, innovation budgets that are disruptive, uh, that takes time, that are costly. Our job is also to prove and uh bring quick proof of concepts, so quick uh design and minimum viable concept and then proof of concept so that we kind of bridge the gap of uh the different technological readiness level as fast as possible and with the best de-risking strategy. So part of our job is not just only our biomimicry expertise, it's also to reassure and um to be able to identify the topics with our clients and also our prospects that are the most promising ones, um, and that also convey the best success rates possible. So, this is also something where our teams, and I put a lot of pressure at this as the CEO on that, our teams put kind of um, I would say we feel it to the heart. It's something that is very important for us, is that we spend time correctly selecting and positioning ourselves with the clients that we select. Um what it what I mean by that is that let's say that we work with a company that is building computers. Such a company has hundreds of topics of challenges. Maybe they want to reduce the reflection on their screens, maybe they want to reduce fingerprints and dirt on the screens and on the on the keyboard. Maybe they want to improve the way the battery and the whole processor dissipate heat in order not to overheat. Maybe they want to have something that is uh better equipped to isolate from humidity, for example, to make it waterproof. So they'll have hundreds of different topics. In biomimicry, we see biomimicry as something that is, of course, very relevant and promising, and that brings solutions to the table that are not accessible through conventional engineering. But this does not mean that biomimicry is a magic stick for the projects we have. We cannot have a success rate of 100% for every topic that we address. The solution is making sure that we correctly selected the topics with our partners before even getting into the research and development projects so that we have the best possible success rate possible. And so after that, you increase your credibility, you increase client intimacy, um, and you clearly renew the relationship with our with our partners on new topics, um, you know, framework agreements, etc. etc. So there is a business side of things, uh thing that makes the difference into how we actually operate biomimicry. And this is a huge win for us. It's in in our mindset to do something else that has been done for years with the academy, academia that is not that much into well, can we make something that is feasible, credible, uh value-oriented for our for the clients? Hill. And uh that's how we made biomimicry work and successful. And that's also how we created a successful business for ourselves.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 16:58

Yeah. And I'm hearing really the big part of the process is vetting the opportunities at the beginning just to make sure it's really a right fit to validate vetting, yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So now eight years in, bioxy is now scaling with a strong record across sectors. What has surprised you most about how executives and innovation leaders respond once they see biomimicry produce tangible results?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

I mean, um, it's something that is very touching. There is kind of something that is noble and and um fulfilling to see people kind of link back with their childhood memories. When we are child, our parent, they buy us books about nature, about living organisms, etc., etc. So there is kind of this magical thing around nature. And when we see engineers getting stars in their eyes, knowing that they have been able to get inspiration from this or this dragonfly, butterfly, even with bacteria or so, and knowing that their actual product is inspired by the ingenuity of a living organism that has been around for millions of years, is something that creates kind of a storytelling that is super strong for the people that actually are in the project. I mean the engineers, the RD teams that we that are our clients. When we see the sparkles in their eyes, it's something that is uh is a very strong feeling. Second, when it comes up in the decision chain of our clients and executive committees hear about that and are also as much surprised and um passionate around what they have just done with us, is something that is also a huge win, not only for the aspect of uh you know emotion, but also in terms of business. Because when you reach that point where people say we have actually reached something and we have a storytelling, etc., then that's the best way Bioexergy again renews the relationship and deepens the relationship with its partners because they're like, okay, next time we have a challenging topic around, our reflex will be to look into nature and will be to uh submit the topic to Bioexegy. So it's a win-win situation. And I think this is something that is uh very heartfelt within Bioexergy is to look at. Um the next step will be when will we when we will be able uh to communicate around that on a much broader scale. I mean, most of the time, bear in mind that we've been around for eight years. Most of the research and development projects that we've been doing at first were in the aeronautics industry, where recent development cycles are very long. So actually, most of the projects we have started with eight years or seven years ago are actually still ongoing or partially confidential, which means we cannot communicate. I cannot go on TV shows and say, okay, here is the whole story, here is the animal, the plant that we've been looking into, and here's the great technology we've been doing with such and such an improvement. Yeah. So it is difficult for us to communicate. And even in most recent projects, we can communicate, but after two or three years, it takes a lot of time. So I think the next emotional connection we'll feel with our own job is when we will be able to communicate to the broader public new technologies, new products, B2C product, B2B product, you know, lip filler, shampoo, some part of a phone or some something that is on the B2C uh level, this will be something great because we'll have actually also reaction from the public. So we are eager to live that, but we'll know it it will take a little bit of time and won't happen overnight.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 20:45

Right. So since it does take time, like you you mentioned, how do you work with companies and communicate biomimicry and the value in a way that resonates with RD leaders, especially those who are focused on performance and timelines and ROI?

SPEAKER_00 21:01

First thing is that we do not see and we don't we do not sell biomimicry as an end. We we sell it as a means, which means that we will not say do biomimicry because it's great and it's a great ideology, it's a great phil philosophy. If we if we were to sell that, it it wouldn't have any impact or echo within the decision makers. So the actual way we do that is to anticipate their challenges. As I explained with the example around, for example, computers, which was a very simplified example, of course, but we try to anticipate what their challenges might be. And this comes from strategic marketing insights. So I have people at Bioexaggy working on that and say, okay, what's the big hurdle? What's the big challenge of today's uh, I don't know, construction industry, for example, in France? What are what are what are or in Europe? What are the big challenges that they face today? So we anticipate their needs. Once we anticipate their needs, it's easy for us to make the connection with biomecry. Because again, we have databases, experience, etc. etc. If I if I try to generalize it, most of the time biomimicry is relevant because of three things, three types of topics that we have. First topic is improving a technology. So having a more competitive technology. Improving a technology means incremental innovation. So reducing weight is one. Better dissipation of heat is another one. Better isolation from cold, better insulation from sound, etc. etc. So incremental improvement is the first type of topic that we have where we actually reinforce or create competitive edge for clients because they have a better technology that is better than their competitors' one. So improvement is something where we actually intervene with BiomimCree. And why is BiomimCree relevant? Because nature has been around for so long that most of nature's materials, systems, functions, mechanisms, properties are as optimized as possible. So optimization means improvement, means increased performance, means incremental innovation. So that's the first, I would say, uh focus area where we intervene with our partners. Second is the process improvement, not the product, but the process. We have actually many partners that actually make us work on their manufacturing systems. So how do we reduce energy consumption? For example, for a fluid mixing tank for the cosmetic industry, where actually you need to heat up the fluid the mixing tank and then you have to cool it down. So, how do we improve, for example, heat exchanges so that we do not have so much energy consumption? Two or three weeks ago, we were delivering a project for a yogurt manufacturing company here in France. We improved on temporal regulation topics with them on their mixing tanks, actually. And that's why I took this example. The objective was to reduce the invoice, the energy invoice they get they gate they get each month because they have so much quantity of energy that their amount of energy that they're consuming, as you can imagine, the invoice at the end for the energy that is computing is high. So this is something where, of course, they don't see the direct link with biomimicry. I mean, how can biomimicry bring down the cost of energy in my industry, in my manufacturing plant, you know? And that's our job to make the link. And this is something where so reducing, optimizing, having developing efficient processes is something where we also intervene. So bringing down the cost, bringing down the energy consumption, water consumption, material consumption, etc. etc. In this aspect, I will also bring, for example, securing critical materials. In many industries now, manufacturers rely on a on a very uh um you know thin scope of material, critical materials, not only critical materials in terms of uh rare earth, for example, but also other materials, uh copper, some metals, etc. etc. And the costs are also very you know varying uh because of geopolitical tensions, for example. So this is also something where biometrics are useful. Why? Because nature actually sometimes uses other materials than very critical, very complex or critical materials. So finding the alternatives in nature, how can we can, for example, create electric uh conductivity that does that uses other types of materials? How can we replace um uh you know some materials that are difficult to recycle? Um, or how can we improve recycling of materials to put it back in the value chain? These are topics that we also have. Another focus area is using biomimetry to have uh more sustainable technologies. So again, finding other materials, improving recyclability, reducing toxicity, etc. etc. And the last point of focus is creativity and disruption. So not incremental innovation, but disruption. We have partners that come to us to say, okay, we've been doing a certain system for years now. And of course, we could look into how we can optimize, but we can improve by X percent, maybe 10%, 5%, and have some kind of an edge for a year or two on our competitors. But we would be actually eager to understand how nature addresses a specific function that our product is addressing, but by looking into something that is very breakthrough, very disruptive. Think again of the landing gear of Safran. This is something where we could easily have a reflection of I'm not saying this is a topic that we had with them. If it was, I wouldn't be able to uh to address it and to to talk about it. But let's say they come to us and say, actually, uh we would be interesting to say how does nature spin or absorb energy? You know, this is something could be could be actually interesting. Um think again of the of the washing machine. Humans have been doing washing machine where uh I mean for your laundry, for example, where it's actually something, a wheel that spins and it's it's been around for years now. But how does nature clean? How does nature reduce humidity? How does nature spin something? Or you could you could easily find ways to be very creative. And this um actually reminds me of a good example of a of a partner we had in the road construction industry. They told us, well, what's the road of the future? And when you think about that, of course, that nature does not build roads, you know, but nature resists to heat, nature resists to compression forces, traction forces, so mechanical forces. Uh, nature needs to prevent uh yeah, overflow of water. And so you'll find uh topics where we are creative and we we try to create disruption thanks to biomimicry. It's kind of a creative way to do things, right? So yeah, that makes sense. You understand, well, that actually biomimicry is very, very versatile. You could do a you can do a lot of things with biomimicry.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 28:18

Right. And I know your client base spans everything from aerospace and automotive to luxury goods and health. What patterns do you see across industries? And are the best biomimicry opportunities usually driven by performance, like sustainability, regulation, cost, or all of the above?

SPEAKER_00 28:34

At first, I would say critical pain points. It's the excuse that they find to invest, because actually it costs money to do biomim to do biomimicry, and it's our business, so we need to make a living out of it. So of course they have to invest in that. So the most critical ones are the ones where they invest. Depending on the industry, depending on the use case, what I see big trends are actually, at least in Europe, regulations. Regulations that come from the European Union, for example, is something that creates kind of a very clear, dated bottleneck. They know that in some years' time they will have a regulation, and if they don't sell solve if solve if they will lose their business, they will lose this product, or they be they will be unlawful. So of course they have it's an urgent matter, urgent pay point, and it justifies the investment. So that's the first trend. Second trend, I would say at first, it's way easier to do incremental innovation because it's something that is more concrete, more foreseeable, something that they can grasp. It's graspable for them, you know. And so I would say that the trend for BioXG is most of the time when we initiate a relationship, when we sell a project, it's because of regulation or incremental innovation where they want to get ahead competition. And once we have established the relationship after, for example, one or two years, then it becomes a little bit easier to talk about sustainability, to talk about disruption. Because these are sometimes it's seen as cherry on top, it's seen as it's a nice to have, not a must-have. And I would say this does not actually depend just on biomimicry. I think if you look at any company, consulting company in the engineering field, RD field, or even strategic consulting, I think most of the business they do at first is on must-haves. And then once the relationship is well established with the client, nice to have.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 30:36

Yeah. Now I know you've also worked on bio-inspired algorithms, including inspirations from insect brains to reducing computing power for drones and autonomy. Where do you think that bio-inspired AI can create the most immediate industrial advantage?

SPEAKER_00 30:51

I would say it's uh reducing energy consumption and computing power needs. This is quite obvious for me, is that uh most of the time when we have topics around algorithms, our partners they ask us to reduce the energy consumption because it costs money, it costs space, it costs also carbon footprint in some cases. And so think of all the huge data centers, etc., etc. So, how do you rationalize an algorithm that uh has the same result, same reliability, but the cost of computation is lower. And that's the big topic where we intervene with biomimicry. So it may seem abstract, but think of it as if you have insects. The best example is, for example, a dragonfly. It has to compute and it has to analyze and process an environment, its immediate environment, because it has to identify threats and also identify prey. And so, in that sense, with a very small, very small brain, it has to compute 360-degree vision, it has to see on a fast scale, so it it has kind of fast vision for the dragonfly, it has to compute the trajectory of its prey, and in the meantime, it has also to compute its own flight path, its own gliding path, or targeting uh scenario of a prey, or escape scenario of uh for, for example, of predators, you know. So it does that with very simple, very um, you know, low energy consuming brains. And this example could be taken also for humans. We are not uh sophisticated, not as sophisticated as the as the Durgenfry to catch prey, to catch a mosquito or so, but we are sophisticated when it comes to complex computation. I mean, we are talking, I'm thinking of many things to say, structuring my English, which is not my French, and this takes a lot of computing power. But despite all of that, I mean, I can function for a whole day on on one or two meals perfectly fine, and I'm not using a lot of energy. So, this is something where we actually extract uh and abstract the way neuroscience tells us uh a brain works, a brain processes information, a brain filters out noise from actually valuable information, and try to design bio-inspired algorithms. So reducing the computation power is one thing. Second, it may also be improving reliability, so making sure an algorithm is safer. And this happens a lot in the autonomous algorithms. So for drones, for cars, for trains, for airplanes, everything that is automated needs reducing computational power. And this is something where we are beginning to see a lot of traction. And actually, we are in the process of um filing for our first patent on that, first success story with the car industry, with the car manufacturer here in uh in France.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 33:50

Yeah, it works fine. Yeah, very exciting. And Bioxy has grown through organic growth rather than heavy fundraising. And you're aiming for continued expansion in Europe and internationally. What does responsible scale look like for a biomimicry RD design office? Talent, processes, partnership, or geographic expansion?

SPEAKER_00 34:08

Yeah, so in terms of talents, my teams are engineers. I do have, of course, support functions, marketing, strategic marketing, finance, HR, etc., etc. But I mean, the core business, the core asset um is of course great engineers. We are lucky in France, we do have great engineers. Um, and so most of the time it's just paying their salary. So that's I I think the the higher function costs, you have the offices space, of course, et cetera. But I mean, the cost is the wages. That's the main cost. So the business model is that we go to our partners and we tell them, okay, uh, this is the topic, this is what we can do with them. And once they're convinced, of course, they ask for a quotation. And the quotation is very simple, very uh hands-on uh consulting business. It's okay, I have four engineers, they will work for six months' time. Daily rate of these engineers is uh is an expert one, is a more junior one. Here's the complete uh budget. It's kind of a plan where it's fixed budget, and they see our clients, they see, okay, this is 50 kilo euro project, this is 100 kilo euro project, it's clear for them. But um, we do also need partners. And these partners, they come up when we need, for example, to prototype a technology. Prototyping a technology does not come free. It's, I mean, at Bioxy, we don't have the means to prototype and to test all of the technologies that we develop. It's way too complicated. We covered way too much different use cases in different industries. This means that we have to surround ourselves by laboratories, experts, university that actually um have the means and the equipment, the right equipment to test the technology that we invent. And for this, of course, we put that in the invoice a little bit later. We anticipate that with our clients, but to say, okay, testing this or this um sample of a product of a coating of a material or so will cost 5 kiloeur, 10 kiloeur or so. So we expand after that by putting additional options, uh, by of course testing the technology, which is perfectly understandable and well accepted by our partners. We actually do not make a lot of margin on that. Uh, and then uh, of course, we also try to improve our business model by improving IP, by co-finding patents, by co-ownership of the patents, which our partners also accept in some condition. We create a business model where we can also scale. That is interesting. We we scale with patents, we scale with technology. If we develop, for example, um tribology system that reduces friction within the gear of a watch with Swiss watch manufacturer, we will file the patent with him to create a bio-inspired technology that reduces friction on the gears. But actually, this could be useful for the train industry, for the car industry. And then you see the scalability of BioExerges model. Now we are trying also to scale internationally. This is something difficult, but we actually have clients in Switzerland, in Austria, in Germany, in Japan. Uh, we hope to have our first clients in the US not that far in the future. Uh, we actually have first discussions with them. We work with in Italy, so it it's a niche expertise, and this means that we can develop internationally.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 37:26

Yeah, and it's working. So that's amazing. Finally, you also speak frequently to executive audiences and publish and major French media, and you're launching your own podcast soon. What role does storytelling play in accelerating adoption of biomimicry? And what do you most want leaders to understand right now?

SPEAKER_00 37:44

I do think that it's part of our role and our mission to make biomimicry well known. And that's why I, Lianne, I also accepted your invitation. The more we talk about biomimicry, the more it makes sense, and the more people have the same feeling and passion that we feel. Of course, it's uh it's also in our best interest to do so because the more we talk about biomimicry, the more the more we are seen as a reference. We're the more we are seen as the leader in this sense. So we are joining utility and pleasure. And I think that what I'm trying to do by accepting podcast interviews and also I'm a lot in on LinkedIn is making sure that people understand the whole added value of biomimicry, why it is sophisticated and what types of results it can bring to the table. And it works because uh nowadays I have like 45,000 people um following me on LinkedIn in France. May not seem that much when you look at the uh US market, but in France it's uh actually uh kind of a good deal. And uh this is something that not only brings inbound business for us, but I think it's it it resonates with me because uh it's part of our job to make biomimicry successful, well-known, actionable.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 38:58

Yeah, that makes sense. Just spread the news and yeah, create that education, educate your audience, and also provide evidence through the your successes. Well, Sydney, thank you so much for joining me. I definitely hear the passion in your voice, and it's really exciting what you're up to as far as producing solutions for biomimicry. Yeah, you're welcome. Well, Sydney, thank you for joining me. I love how you frame biomimicry as both wonder and discipline, not just philosophy, but a rigorous RD approach that can deliver real competitive advantages. For our listeners, how can they learn more about bioxy and biomimicry? And how can they reach out?

SPEAKER_00 39:38

They can reach on LinkedIn by just my name, Sydney Rostan, or of course, my company's name, Bioxygy. And we are very active on LinkedIn, very reactive also on LinkedIn. So please feel free to reach on that. Otherwise, of course, Bioxy.com, which is our website.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 39:55

All right. Well, thank you, Sydney. And for our listeners, if you enjoyed today's episode, subscribe to Industry Ignited and share it with a colleague who cares about innovation and sustainability. Until next time, stay bold, stay curious, and keep igniting industry.