Kickstarting an external partnering program in 60 days

Situation

Augmenting internal expertise with R&D partnerships

Valent BioSciences LLC and Valent U.S.A. LLC are wholly owned subsidiaries of Sumitomo Chemical Company Ltd of Tokyo, Japan.

Valent BioSciences is a technology and marketing leader in biorationals with over 60 years of experience perfecting proprietary fermentation processes and commercializing products to advance sustainable agriculture and global public health, such as those targeting vector-borne diseases like Zika, malaria, and West Nile Virus.

Valent U.S.A. serves the North American agricultural markets by integrating biorational, botanical and traditional chemistry innovation and scientific advances from Sumitomo Chemical, and the Valent group of companies (VGC) which includes Valent BioSciences, Pace International, Mycorrhizal Applications, and McLaughlin Gormley King Company, as well as third parties. These partnerships allow Valent U.S.A. to create a broad range of solutions to meet grower needs.

To increase the opportunities for creating innovations, Dr. Brian Lin, Technological Innovations Lead at Valent U.S.A. and a team across VGC identified Halo as an engine to help seek new and effective partnerships. Dr. Lin and the team had seen the impact of external R&D collaborations in other organizations and Halo’s innovative platform aligned well with their business needs and objectives.

Our engagement with Halo significantly elevated Valent's global profile and greatly expanded our universe of potential collaboration partners, and this positive impact on our R&D programs has reverberated deep within the Valent Group Companies. Based on these results, the future does indeed look bright.

Action

R&D partnering on-demand

Results in a fraction of the time

With a competitive hiring landscape and an average salary exceeding $100,000 for an experienced technology scout, many companies seek the outcomes of external R&D (distributed risk and faster time to market) without the considerable investments in internal infrastructure.

Halo offers a turnkey external innovation platform with a network of credentialed researchers and startups in over 100 countries (across every continent except Antarctica) actively looking to partner with industry.

Valent BioSciences and Valent U.S.A. approached Halo to jumpstart a practice—in less than sixty days—that would typically take years and significant resources. This would allow the companies to remain lean and focused on product development while still cultivating a global innovation community.

Halo has helped us realize and build capability and explore new ideas, with greater speed and effectiveness.

Evening the playing field

Trusted by prominent enterprise players, including Bayer Crop Science, BASF and Corteva, as a force multiplier for their established external innovation capabilities, Halo arms small- and mid-size companies like Valent BioSciences and Valent U.S.A. with the same resources.

Crucially, Halo’s platform helps develop companies’ innovation brands so they remain competitive with these larger corporations and establish themselves as preferred partners for researchers to engage when they have relevant technologies and projects.

Results

Proactive solutions across 3 businesses

The response to Valent BioSciences’ and Valent U.S.A.’s requisitions was astounding: In the two months that the Request for Proposals (RFPs) were live on Halo’s platform, the company received 204 proposals from researchers across 40 startups and nearly 100 universities. Additionally, the companies connected directly with almost 500 interested researchers through webinars.

As a result of the program, three projects were fully funded by Valent BioSciences for one year with the potential for extension based on year-end results. The new partners reside in top academic institutions, including the University of Florida and Emory University.

• The first project, in collaboration with Dr. Sunny Liao and Dr. Cheryl Mackowiak, seeks to understand unexplored benefits of an existing arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) product, with the outcomes of a larger market for the company and new benefits for customers including more efficient nutrient and water use.
• The second project, in collaboration with Dr. Debjani Sihi, addresses novel ways to quantify soil carbon sequestration, unlocking an estimated $2 billion market.
• The final is an investment in a next-generation agrichemical encapsulation technology that enhances control and delivery for growers.

The benefits of Halo’s platform go beyond the successful response to the RFPs, generating value for the entire organization. Valent BioSciences and Valent U.S.A. established a network of researchers across 28 countries they can engage for future projects and discovered a new hiring pipeline (having identified compelling Ph.D. students through Halo).

Through the Halo platform, Valent BioSciences and Valent U.S.A. identified dozens of eligible partners in sixty days and established three projects with leading international experts in their core business areas. For other mid-sized enterprises new to external collaboration, Halo affords access to global, diversified expertise typically reserved only for the largest multinational companies.

The Halo ecosystem helped us reach a new and diverse group of scientists, and the interface made managing records and communications simple.