Bio-Rad Laboratories × Halo
Finding niche R&D partners beyond conferences and cold outreach
How Bio-Rad’s R&D team in France replaced ad hoc sourcing with one structured request, and got 19 proposals from innovators they had never met.
19
Proposals received from global innovators on first request
5x
Response rate vs. prior approach — more responses than previous manual outreach
4-5
Active partner conversations — NDAs and proof of concept within 2 months
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Challenge
Bio-Rad's R&D team had no reliable way to find external partners, and when a key person left, every relationship they'd built left with them.
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Solution
A single structured request, drafted and launched by Halo — with a built-in deadline that forced both sides to move.
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Results
19 proposals on the first request — 5x what the team was generating manually. Four to five active partnerships, including NDAs, within two months.
Situation
Specialized needs, and a sourcing process that couldn’t scale
Bio-Rad Laboratories’ R&D team in France faced a sourcing problem common to specialized life science divisions: the need to find highly specific external innovation partners for niche technical challenges, but no reliable, scalable way to do it. The team’s primary approach depended on attending conferences, scanning scientific literature, and cold-outreach to individual researchers, a process that was time-consuming, geographically constrained, and unpredictable.
When a promising contact was made, there was no guarantee of follow-through. Partnerships stalled, emails went unanswered, and the lack of a structured timeline meant that even promising leads could go quiet for months. Compounding the problem was organizational fragility: when a team member with key relationships left, that institutional knowledge walked out the door with them.
What Bio-Rad needed was a way to systematically reach a broader global landscape of innovators, including those working in adjacent industries, and to do it without the pressure and chance dependency of conference-based networking.
We were blocked somewhere to find any other partnership or solution. The platform gave us the opportunity to find other people, other companies that were not especially visible to us.
Stephen LamartProject Manager, Bio-Rad LaboratoriesThe approach
One structured request, with a deadline
Bio-Rad partnered with Halo to replace their ad hoc outreach with a structured, targeted innovation request: a privately posted brief that reached a global network of researchers, startups, and commercial suppliers across continents, without revealing the company’s identity or strategic intent.
Halo’s team handled brief drafting and scouting outreach, and the request included a built-in submission window with clear deadlines, creating shared accountability between Bio-Rad and potential partners. This was a significant shift from the team’s prior experience, where outreach often dragged on indefinitely with no defined timeline forcing either side to focus.
The results
5x more responses than prior outreach
Bio-Rad’s first request generated 19 proposals from global innovators, including partners they would not have encountered through conferences or literature-based sourcing. Compared to what the team had been achieving manually at the same time, Halo delivered an estimated 5x more responses, directly confirmed by the R&D team.
Before Halo
Conference-dependent partner discovery with pressure to convert
Time-consuming individual literature searches and cold scientist outreach
Geographically constrained, primarily regional contacts
After Halo
Structured global requests reaching innovators across continents
19 qualified proposals in a structured 2-month window with built-in accountability
Partners sourced globally, including cross-industry innovators not reachable through existing channels
Impact
5x more responses vs. prior approach at the same time
Sourcing time redirected from manual outreach to partner evaluation
Access to novel, cross-industry solutions that conferences and literature searches would not have surfaced
From 19 proposals to 4-5 active partnerships in 2 months
Of the 19 proposals received, 10 were moved into active assessment. Within the same 2-month window, Bio-Rad progressed to NDA discussions and proof-of-concept conversations with 4 to 5 partners, a pace that would have been unachievable through the team’s previous manual approach.
The structured review process also introduced a discipline the team had not previously had: a committed 72-hour turnaround on proposal responses, keeping the pipeline moving and signaling to innovators that Bio-Rad was a serious, responsive partner.
Cross-industry discovery that conferences could not have produced
Among the proposals received was at least one solution from an entirely adjacent industry, a novel approach that Bio-Rad’s existing sourcing methods would not have surfaced. The team flagged this as one of the standout outcomes of the pilot, describing it as exactly the kind of unexpected, high-relevance match they had hoped for when they first engaged Halo.
The cross-industry discovery was something we would not have found through conferences and literature-based sourcing. Finding that on the first go was really powerful.
Looking ahead
A centralized network that outlasts team transitions
One of the less visible but strategically significant outcomes of the pilot was the creation of a durable, searchable innovation network. Over the course of the engagement, Bio-Rad built a network of 300+ innovators within Halo, centralized and accessible to the full team. When a key team member departed mid-pilot, the institutional knowledge around partner relationships and sourcing activity remained intact and accessible, something the team explicitly acknowledged as a pain point with their prior approach.
- Built a network of 300+ innovators
- Centralized the team and project
- Generated institutional knowledge around partnerships and sourcing
About Bio-Rad Laboratories
Bio-Rad Laboratories is a global leader in life science research and clinical diagnostics, providing products and systems for scientific discovery and healthcare. Their R&D teams operate across multiple divisions, developing advanced technologies including digital PCR, sample preparation, and molecular biology platforms.
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