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Date
In this nifty article from this past Sunday's Boston Globe, you can read about several companies in the Boston area and the projects they've initiated to harness the power of microbes.
As you remember from the infamous H. G. Wells story, The War Of The Worlds, microbes have helped us before (in fiction) and now they are helping us again (in fact).
These micro-organisms are being engineered and "hired" to clean waste water, produce fuel, or to sterilize hospital equipment.
Project development time has increased orders of magnitude, even since the 1990s. Where it used to take 10 or 15 years to develop a new biological product, this can be done "at a much more accelerated pace", challenging not just the scientists and engineers invloved, but of course the project teams and necessarily the project manager.
The companies involved here are Manus Biosynthesis, Cambrian Innovation, Ginkgo BioWorks, Novophage, and others.
Cambrian, for example, is cultivating colonies of naturally-occurring bacteria that can serve as catalysts for chemical reactions, making them significantly more efficient. They activate with electrical impulses. These microbes were only discovered in 1999.
When the microbes are grouped, they can convert CO2 into methane, making it easier to collect and therefore preventing CO2 from escaping into the air, and can also, in turn, generate electricity.
Read the story. You can see the implications for large numbers of projects, and it reinforces our assertion that project managers should become more attuned to the language of sustainability and understand the opportunities it provides for PMs in fields such as this.
Oh, and one more thing. Don't let the idea of engineered bio-products scare you too much. It was beginning to creep us out a bit as we read through it, but the authors make a really good point.
Sitting in your house, or one very close to it, is an example of a genetically-engineered organism. There's a picture of one below:
Yep. Dogs are just genetically-modified wolves. And we (generally) trust these even with our little kids.
In any case - check out the article and continue to build your knowledge in sustainability and project management; you may find yourself leading a project just like the ones in the story!
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: February 01, 2012 11:38 AM |
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