Many biotech innovations stall before reaching the market, often becoming trapped in so-called ‘valleys of death’. While European initiatives and funding schemes have largely addressed the first valley — the gap between academic discovery and a working prototype — a second, deeper valley remains between functioning concept and commercial scale.
In this second valley of death, the bottleneck is created by the capital-intensive scale-up requirements, slow and fragmented regulation, and challenges in industrial adoption. Misalignment with the needs of real-world users significantly contributes to that final hurdle. Too often, research agendas are shaped exclusively by experts, leaving end-users and their valuable lived experience out of the equation until they’re being sold a product.
“Many biotech innovations fail not because the science is wrong, but because the context was ignored,” says Charlotte Boone, Co-Founder of Alice down the rabbit hole, a Ghent-based market research company specializing in co-creation.
From Challenge to Opportunity
As is often the case for new technologies, many biotech solutions in the agrifood sector have been met with skepticism and concern, despite their transformative potential. For consumers, trust remains a core barrier, whether the topic is precision fermentation, gene editing, or climate-smart food ingredients.
“Many biotech innovations fail not because the science is wrong, but because the context was ignored.” – Charlotte Boone
People increasingly expect transparency from companies, not only about what a product is, but also why it exists and how it aligns with their values, including health, safety, ethics, and sustainability. For farmers, challenges with new products often relate to feasibility and fit. Innovations may promise sustainability or efficiency but fall short when they don’t align with local soils, seasons, workflows, economic realities, or regulatory requirements.
“If you want your agrifood solution to have an impact, then start building relationships with the people who will use and ultimately trust it,” says Kim Hertegonne, Biovia’s Domain Lead for Agtech & Industrial Biotech.
Agrifood stakeholders — including farmers and consumers — are not passive bystanders. Farmers bring deep operational expertise and context-specific knowledge. Consumers are experts in their own lives, values, and behaviors, shaping what ultimately succeeds in the marketplace. Other stakeholders — such as policymakers, retailers, and logistics partners — can also provide valuable insights early in research or product development, helping to narrow the gap of that second valley of death.
Choosing the Right Level of Engagement
Engagement is not one-size-fits-all. Informing stakeholders builds awareness, while consulting gathers input that can guide decisions. Lower-engagement methods (such as surveys, polls, and interviews) help researchers collect data and perspectives, but they stop short of shared decision-making.
“Co-creation creates space for fresh thinking, unbiased perspectives and insights into behavioral drivers that are often overlooked in expert-only settings.” – Kim Hertegonne
Higher-engagement approaches involve multiple stakeholders as active contributors. Co-creation represents one of the more collaborative models, bringing together participants from diverse sectors, each with unique skills, experiences, and networks.
“Co-creation creates space for fresh thinking, unbiased perspectives and insights into behavioral drivers that are often overlooked in expert-only settings,” says Hertegonne.
Reducing Risk and Increasing Relevance
Traditionally, biotech innovation follows a linear path — research, development, validation, and (only then) engagement with the end-users. Co-creation challenges this model by involving different stakeholders much earlier and throughout the innovation journey. It often results in solutions that are more relevant and easier to adopt, because they reflect the real constraints and expectations of the end-users.
Co-creation also improves product–market fit by aligning innovation with affordability, usability, and quality, reducing risk by identifying technical and social barriers before costly trials or failed scale-up efforts. It strengthens innovation and accelerates market entry by combining complementary perspectives from scientists, farmers, consumers, marketers, and sustainability experts into more robust, system-ready solutions.
“Co-creation is not a buzzword.” – Charlotte Boone
Importantly, co-creation can also help build trust and acceptance for new agrifood solutions through transparency and the up-front participation of multiple stakeholders.
“Co-creation is not a buzzword,” says Boone. “It is a strategic mindset that reshapes how agrifood and bio-based innovation is conceived, developed, and implemented.”
What Co-Creation Can Look Like in Practice
Imagine a biotech startup developing a precision-fermented milk protein as a sustainable alternative to animal-based dairy. In a traditional R&D model, the company would focus first on yield, purity, and cost of production, and only later engage food companies, retailers, and consumers.
With co-creation, the process might look very different. Imagine an alternative, where early consumer panels reveal that people are hesitant about terms like “microbial” or “fungal” but respond more positively to “fermentation-derived dairy proteins”. Retailers confirm that price and taste are non-negotiable — even for sustainability-minded shoppers — which directly informs both branding and cost targets. The result is not just a protein that works in a bioreactor, but an ingredient designed to fit factory processes, consumer perception, and sustainability goals.
Read this article to learn about Belgium’s ‘Positive for the Planet’ evolution through agritech!
Of course, co-creation alone doesn’t remove core R&D bottlenecks. Commercial validation, access to funding, the scalability of the technology, and cost-competitiveness all have to be addressed. But co-creation does provide strategic leverage. It strengthens a company’s B2B story, reduces market risk, and equips ingredient producers with the evidence they need to convince food manufacturers and investors that their product has a credible path to market — and into consumers’ shopping bags.
B-Trust: Strengthening Trust in Biotech
Alice down the rabbit hole and Biovia are both part of B-Trust — a European project aiming to strengthen societal trust in agrifood and bio-based solutions. The project is supported by the European Union’s Horizon Europe program and aims to engage stakeholders through a governance model built on co-creation, transparency, and clear risk–benefit assessment, to support more informed discussion and decision-making around biotech.
B-Trust aims to empower consumers, so they can be the catalysts for innovations that help make our food systems healthier, more sustainability, and productive.
Visit the B-Trust Forum to read more about co-creation and learn how to implement it in practice.
Biovia is a proud partner in B-Trust, bringing the project’s insights and outputs directly to our members. Contact Kim Hertegonne, Domain Lead Agtech & Industrial Biotech at Biovia for more information.
