A reflection on a bone tissue engineering design and commercialisation project

A commercialisation project centred round a material called synthetic nacre was undertaken as a team as part of the 2014 Masters of Advanced Technology Enterprise (MATE) programme. There were multiple goals of: examining the individual role within the group,from an engineering discipline (mechatronics), and what it means for building successful teams; finding and developing the material for a market application, in this case the niche of biodegradable osteoconductive load bearing biomaterials for orthopaedic implants; and reflecting on the personal contribution to the commercialisation process and how successful it was.

The role of an engineer to solve problems was proposed and found to be partially true in this case; additionally a secondary role in communicating technical information coherently was also apparent and important to the enterprise development. An adaptive biomaterial design concept and specification for the target application was formed using the literature and extrapolating where there was no resolution or gaps in the research. The influence of mechatronics has been established on the decision making process and direction of the commercialisation project. The design process was incomplete and therefore the enterprise develop was unsuccessful as it has not been validated by going through a full design, test, evaluate cycle. The goals of the course environment and the team building approach further reinforces this belief.