Co-Labs: The Origin Story with co-founders Samuel Wines and Andrew Gray | #1

Welcome to the Inaugural Edition of The Strange Attractor!

In this podcast, we delve into the Co-Labs' origin story, exploring where we came from and how we managed to build Victroia's first co-working lab and transdisciplinary innovation hub. 

We also discuss some of the fun projects that are happening in the lab.  Links to the members we discussed can be found below: 

• Radetec: Point of Care STI Diagnostics
• PuriflOH: air purification using plasma
• Vow: Alternative protein company working on meat products
• Magic Valley: Food company developing cultivated meat products
• Steribright: Autonomous smart sterilisation tech, using UVC and MERV/HEPA filtration
• Auskelp: Creating an environmentally friendly form of aquaculture, using ocean kelp
• Symex Labs: Developing a biosensor patch to track ovulation using hormone sensing
• Omega Quant: Offers fatty acid analytical services to help consumers and researchers monitor their nutritional status
• Cortical Labs: creating silicon-neuron interfaces to create organic-digital intelligence

If you're interested in some of the topics we covered, links can be found below to reference material: 

• Designing Regenerative Cultures - Daniel Wahl 
• The Systems View of Life - Fritjof Capra & Pier Luigi Luisi
• IP-NFTs and FRENS, IP-NFTs article 2 
• DAOs

A link to the transcript can be found

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We're working on and supporting a range of community-led, impact-oriented initiatives spanning conservation, bioremediation, synthetic biology, biomaterials, and systems innovation.

If you have an idea that has the potential to support the thriving of people and the planet, get in contact! We'd love to help you bring your bio-led idea to life.

Otherwise, join our online community of innovators and change-makers via this link.

Transcript

Samuel Wines  0:00  
Hello, and welcome to the strange attractor, an experimental podcast from CO labs, a transdisciplinary Innovation Hub, and biotechnology co working lab based in Melbourne, Australia. I'm your co host Sam wines and alongside my co founder Andrew grey will delve deep into the intersection of biology, technology and society through the lens of complexity and systems thinking. Join us on a journey of discovery as we explore how transdisciplinary innovation informed by life's regenerative patterns and processes could help us catalyse a transition towards a thriving future for people and the planet.

Andrew Gray  0:42  
Yeah, so where do we start? From the beginning or

Samuel Wines  0:45  
Yeah, I mean, I guess. Yeah. Let's let's let's attempt to do a an abridged and abridged versions like

Andrew Gray  0:55  
are sort of how we caught up and an abridged version. Right. Alright, so

Samuel Wines  1:00  
All right, can we can smash this out about five?

Andrew Gray  1:03  
Yeah. And we can always cut out the things that you know. Origin Story. Yeah. So I guess 2014? Man, was it 24? Today? Yeah, I think 2014 Maybe even 2013? Yeah, a lot of Yeah. So I was in. I was studying over. When I was a deacon. I think it was deacon at the time, I think it was just about to get kicked out of Deacon for not for not paying my annual fees.

Samuel Wines  1:36  
Well, I mean, like, should we clarify that when you say not paying your No, no,

Andrew Gray  1:39  
no, I wasn't being I wasn't being tight or anything. I was actually being paid by the US government to go study? Yes, that would have been 2012 There was a government shutdown in the US. And they didn't pay for those fees. And they didn't send me a note. So when I found out it was like, two weeks before the exams, and I was like, hey, you know, before you sit your exams, you're gonna have to pay us $10,000 in cash. And I don't think very many uni students. What are you gonna get we're gonna get that money from so I just got my transcripts and had to leave and just look to reapply, you know, in the next year or so to other universities that would accept me and Monash? Yeah, interestingly, I got accepted into an advanced programme, I think only because of my age, and life experience, I

Samuel Wines  2:33  
logically advanced programme.

Andrew Gray  2:37  
But it was a motley crew. So it wasn't just, you know, myself, like people my age, at the time I was, I would have been about like, 2020, like, mid 20s, there was lots of, you know, plenty of students coming out of high school. So it was a pretty cool mix. And the premise was, we were going to, or they were going to instil science and entrepreneurship in people so that, you know, when they go on to, hopefully, you know, careers that might have a decision making aspect to it, whether it's in government or, you know, working for NGOs, or, you know, large companies, that there's that sort of STEM background, sort of, you know, critical thinking, you know, non bias, hopefully approach to reviewing data and making decisions that that would be their sort of guiding people's, you know, the way they viewed the world and the way they interacted with others, and the way they you know, ultimately made decisions on things that could impact society. And, yeah, that was, that was a lot of fun. It wasn't a lot of science. I think that was one of the things I noticed around most, both universities, and probably all universities, you know, the practice, I guess, would probably the most expensive part of the education. So there's not, there's often not a lot of prep time. And I think that coupled with the fact that was basically having to start over, meant that I really needed to find an if I really wanted to learn hands on and, you know, which is my favourite way of learning, which I think we can all appreciate is our favourite way of learning. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, if you're playing instruments, or, you know, working with wood, or whatever it is, you know, you learned so much more through the hands on sort of approach.

Samuel Wines  4:17  
What's that whole? Like? There's the union for ways of knowing I'm sure there's a few other people who have made some nice frameworks there. But yeah, there's, like so much of our education is focused on the propositional or the intellectual way of knowing something in the abstract verse versus say, knowing something in the phenomenological or physical. So like in the body, there's ways of knowing through like process and doing and you understand it and it's like, embodied, you know, and then there's like emotional as well, which is again, like, it's something that can be quite felt. And then like intuition, which is like all great science or great discoveries primarily probably come from Intuition not not really following the scientific method like a lot lot of it goes, I reckon, or think and then you kind of backwards map and go, well, then how would I test that? Or you might do things without? You know, it's a lot more nonlinear than what is taught?

Andrew Gray  5:11  
Yeah, absolutely. I think sometimes even not knowing, you know, can be quite helpful, because you're almost like, a bit more encouraged to go check it out or follow it up. Because you're, you know, instead of us shooting it down and believing that it's, you know, you know, everything. And so therefore, this potential project is not going to work. It's like, by not knowing just enough, I feel like

Samuel Wines  5:32  
that's kind of what makes us succeed in a way. It's like, well, we don't know, but we'll we'll give it a crack, like, starting with that as the premises being like, I don't know, or if I do know, some of it, I don't know, all of it, you know, and maybe we can just start there and see what is known can be known and how it can be applied.

Andrew Gray  5:52  
Absolutely. And I wasn't getting, you know, so that, that wasn't really happening for me, which I was really craving. And I think most of our degree was really focused around, you know, social studies, business, a lot of electives, but not a lot of science. And I really just wanted to do the science. I

Samuel Wines  6:12  
tell you what, I had no idea. Yeah, that your entrepreneurship in STEM course was so much more business than science.

Andrew Gray  6:20  
Well, I mean, there was a lot of science to like, you know, you have your science electives, but it wasn't the the main focus wasn't, I would argue the science. That, so anyway, that that was happening. But the entrepreneurship portion of it really encouraged me to pursue this idea, which kind of came about through, you know, at the time, I was back in 2013. Really excited about synthetic biology, and just reading all these really, yeah, cool, cool experiments happening around the world. And, you know, just the idea of programming with DNA, because I really wanted to do computer programming early on, and I was doing a little bit of it. And I just loved how there wasn't, you know, any single right solution to particular challenge or problem, it was really more about creativity to some degree. And yeah, sure, things would be more efficient, you know, what you could argue in a biological system, more efficiency means less resources, whatnot, but to get something to work, you know, there was multiple ways of achieving that. And I really like that sort of open, creative aspect of sin bio, but there wasn't anything here and none of my lectures or professors had any sort of experience in bio, and they were, you know, obviously confusing it with other things like systems design and systems. Biology, which is a bit different. And the thought, I think, or I can't remember, I think it was a TED talk from a biohacker, or lady in the DIY bio space. Helen Jorgensen out of Gen Space in New York. And I was watching this about, you know, this community lab with this, do it yourself biology space, and where people were actually just sort of CO opting in on this model, where, you know, they managed and, you know, ran a lab. And it was a motley crew, you know, there's people there were experienced, but a lot of people coming in from just off the street who were curious and wanted to learn. And I really liked that and found a whole bunch of other people that were similarly minded and there was one already in Sydney,

Samuel Wines  8:25  
did you start finding people for that?

Andrew Gray  8:29  
That was a literally, I think it's still on Reddit. But there was actually a Reddit post like this really long ranty Reddit post I put up about creating a lab in Melbourne and just seeing who would, who would reach out and get in touch and say, I'm on Facebook, and I was just blasting everywhere constantly and updating my own posts. So they'd come back up, like, Hey, I got a PCR machine now, you know, it's, it's happening. And I met up with the bio foundry crew, so this would have been his name's Meow, meow, meow, meow now Yeah, little disco Ghana. Meow, meow. Oh, about the disco gamma? Yeah, it's his middle name. Okay. And, yeah, so they were running it. So they already done it. And I think the biggest challenge in my mind, in anybody's mind and creating a lab, if you haven't done it is like, well, what are the requirements? You know, what are the legal requirements to running a lab? And I think that puts a lot of people off, but it was just really curious and having seen someone else who'd done in Australia, you know, as soon as you see something in existence, you're like, Alright, I know. It's possible. It's like

Samuel Wines  9:27  
the four minute mile, right? It's like, once you know that that's possible. It's like, okay, cool. I can strive towards that. Exactly.

Andrew Gray  9:32  
So, met up with these people, we started catching up in person, and eventually things kicked off with a rave that was run for a side of the railway called the side trans rave and that was our fundraiser people showed up with like lab coats, but this is not the abridged version are really

Samuel Wines  9:52  
good. Keep it going. Don't stop.

Andrew Gray  9:56  
But after that we actually had some funding to build the lab and we were going to have to build it, you know, in this warehouse in Brunswick, out of recycled pallet wood that was, you know, slapped together. But also like, you know, we were very adamant, we just put screws and everything, just like fastening it down, got a whole bunch of silicone sealed it up. So it was actually airtight, and then brought the the ogtr through, which is the office of the Gene Technology Regulator. So if you're going to do any sort of experiments that have a component to it, where you might be manipulating DNA, which, you know, just to just so people know, you know, for example, insulin, you know, that's, that's probably one of the, the most famous experiments where, you know, you probably require the ogtr is oversight, where you're inserting a gene from, you know, a human into another organism, so that it can produce something that a lot of people are suffering from, because it can have access to that. And so the ogtr came through, they were happy with everything we got, we got our certification, PC, one certification, and we had a lab. And eventually, you know, that community grew. And we were doing all sorts of projects. Now, we had a huge group of different people, everything from professors, to lawyers, and students, and all sorts of yoga instructors coming in. And I think everybody really saw something different in the community lab, some people were really interested in their personal health and understanding these new trends in science. Students were interested in job experience, professors were just interested in, you know, I guess, doing this sort of stuff in a non academic setting. So there's a bit of freedom there. And everybody there was really passionate and interested in what's going on. So you're not, you know, you know, when people are asking you questions, because they actually want to know, and they're very, very curious. And, yeah, lots of collaborative projects. So we did like meta genomics projects with Cornell University with Science For All, which is a local Australian charity, looking to create new ways of surveying, Leadbeater, possums, using Edna or environmental DNA, so DNA that we'd retrieved from dirt. We did projects with primary schools going around looking for plastic eating bacteria, and it was going really well. And eventually, you know, we kind of realised that we'd primarily cut because we're primarily catching up in the afternoons and then in the evenings, hey, wouldn't that be cool if we could actually have some time during the day that the lab was getting used? So we thought maybe we would try to rent it out. And then, you know, next thing, you know, we just started getting inundated, inundated, we were getting at least like two or three, you know, queries a week, I'm not renting our little lab space, which at the time was a shipping container, you know, with a sliding glass door, and it can't fit a 15 person team from overseas in a shipping container.

Samuel Wines  12:49  
I'm sure some people would love to try. Yeah. Right.

Andrew Gray  12:53  
They probably have some mobile labs out there. And yeah, I guess that's kind of, you know, obviously, before that you and I had met through the Phoenix core programmer, you know, we created the Phoenix school programme together, which is a charity to donate science equipment diverted from landfill, you know, and towards schools in need, based on the six year rating, which is basically like a socio demographic rating of how much opportunity I suppose the students at a school have. So low opportunity means lower ranking, which we would prioritise as an important school to be able to help out by donating, you know, equipment that we get from universities, research organisations, so on. And, yeah, then COVID. And that's kind of, you know, I don't know why I feel like COVID was almost like a, a catalyst. I

Samuel Wines  13:44  
say this all the time, I think, from a systems based perspective, COVID was the ultimate, ultimate teacher sort of taught us that everything was interconnected, and that the maybe made us realise that the current processes and ways of working and doing that we have in society are not as resilient and reliable as what we thought, you know, maybe six continents supply chains are not a good idea. Yeah, I mean, for me, COVID was cheese. It was a was a it was a pretty rough time, like my grandpa passed away. I had my partner at the time moving overseas. Yeah, I had to go come back home and help manage my parents place. But, you know, through all of that, I was, I guess, reading and trying to connect the dots and trying to find ways to weave together, you know, the commerce degree and the science degree that I've done and you know, how can we base business on biology? How do we base economics on ecology and I stumbled across, quite serendipitously actually, fresh off coppers book and I saw that he was mentioning fractals. I saw that it was mentioning science and spirituality and the difference between spirituality and religion and all these other things. And I was like, Oh man, this guy. This guy gets it. Anyway. And at the time, I didn't buy the book. And I just forgot what it was. And I was like, fractals. Google search? Oh, gosh, yeah, it's mostly just like videos for trip is on YouTube. But um, Mandelbrot was onto something when he came up with that set. But yeah, I guess after so reading that, and then another formative book was designing regenerative cultures. And I guess, through reading those books, I just got really interested in like, how you how, like, how do we radically redesign the human presence on Earth, so that it is not just sustaining what we're doing, but regenerating the biosphere as a whole? And also, you know, how do we support people to do the inner work required to actually face some of these gigantic tasks that we have, and, you know, came to the conclusion that it really felt like the main crisis that we currently sort of are going through like this meta crisis, or policy crisis, whatever you want to call it, it's kind of like a crisis of perception. And it's like the way in which we see the world and the way in which we relate to ourselves, others, and yeah, the world at large. And through cultivating self awareness and systemic awareness, we might be able to acknowledge our own role in the problems, and then also how we could maybe show up in a different way to, I guess, dance with complex systems and try and find more viable pathways forwards. And I guess, as that was happening, you know, in my head, I'm like, oh, what would this look like, you know, is it you know, I found out about Schumacher College and the Santa Fe Institute, you know, they're so they're, like, Schumacher college is, I guess, one of the world's foremost ecological universities. So they teach a lot of eco literacy, holistic science, so like chaos, complexity theory, you know, Mind Body sort of stuff. So really trying to focus on ecological design thinking as well, really focusing on how everything fits together. And then the Santa Fe Institute is like the foremost Research Institute on complexity, which is like a very transdisciplinary space. And I guess, after finding out about these, it just really made sense, because it kind of confirmed what I thought, which was that the reason why I didn't go back to Union do further study. And the reason why I kind of struggled finding something was that I just knew, I was like, very adamant on how does this all fit together? You know, and understanding and seeing that all of these disciplines that we segregate, when you look at life as a whole, you don't look outside and see an economy, you don't look outside and just see a law or a business management or, you know, it's, the whole thing is there and it's like, and there are patterns and processes and first principles that you can take from one system and see how it manifests in another. I guess, through reading these books, I kinda got really excited by that, and came to the conclusion that a really good way to be able to support humanity and trying to find this, I guess a more viable pathway forwards would be through education. At first, I was like education. So like, how do we set up a, you know, a Schumacher college or Santa Fe literacy or something like that. And then sort of, concurrently alongside that, you were like, Oh, by the way, I was thinking of setting up a biotech co working space. And I was just like, ah, that's, that's it. That's like the entry level in because, you know, there's so much that could be done from like an innovating in the process of innovation to make it more sustainable and circular. And so instantly, only sort of chatted about that, Oh, my God, this is perfect. This is exactly what Daniel vial was talking about when it comes to a product service system. So, to maximal utilise resources you can have, like a whole bunch of people collectively using things instead of each individually owning them. Yeah. And then, you know, well, we need to base our economy on green chemistry to make you know, sustainable products, which can then go into a community which can then help build, like infrastructure for an environment and then that environmental by region is linked into a city and into the nation into the world and just seeing how all of these fit together. And to me, it was just like, Yeah, this is, this is the thing that I didn't know was the way forward because as an individual, and then just like, as both of us as individuals, like there's only so much that we could do, you know, but by creating a garden bed with the right fertile environment for people to come and plant the seeds of innovation, you know, to to learn to discover to serious play, you know, who knows what could emerge, but that that way to me seemed like it made way more sense And to support that across Australia, because that would then allow us to really catalyse transformative innovation, because instead of just one or two minds working on it, you can literally activate so many people and exactly seeing like entrepreneurship as, as a form of activism in a way, it's like if you really cared deeply about the planet, let's radically redesign the human presence on Earth. And you know, that's no small feat. That's every single facet of what we do. If it's not designed to be sustainable. It's not,

Andrew Gray  20:30  
it's no small feat, right? Like, it's not going to be one, one action, you know, so it's, it'll be the culmination of many, many of these types of projects, either happening on here or other spaces. Exactly. That are all, you know, minimising our impact and moving us more towards our guess, as you would say, or argue or regenerative, you know, impact.

Samuel Wines  20:50  
Yeah. And I think that you need demonstrated projects for systems change to then inspire others to go, Oh, cool. Like, okay, well, this is happening over there. How do I implement that here in my context, and that, to me, that was sort of like, what Schumacher in the Santa Fe Institute, the Mon Vizio Institute, and all of these other places sort of done, they made me realise that there are other ways forwards there are people working on different things. And, you know, and then also through conversations, I was sort of starting to have with people in Australia realising that there's quite a lot of people who are interested in in that as well. So yeah, I think that was, that was pretty much that was pretty much it. I was delving into all of this stuff, and you sort of reached out when I'm actually thinking of leasing out and a warehouse. Alright, let's do it. Put

Andrew Gray  21:42  
down. Yeah, which lock down was it?

Samuel Wines  21:46  
I think it was, the first one was it? Was the second one. I

Andrew Gray  21:50  
want to say the second one, because we got the lease and then we had another lockdown. Oh, that's fine. In between. Yeah. But the only thing that was saving us was the companies we had working out of here. You know, we're doing things to help.

Samuel Wines  22:03  
COVID COVID. We're doing COVID related research. Yeah. So

Andrew Gray  22:07  
God, that was just really, I don't know, a bit of luck.

Samuel Wines  22:13  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, I think the good there's a good metaphor that you sort of use with this. It's like,

and Katie gave us a good reference. I can't remember what it was. But it was like, luck is like preparation meets opportunity. Yeah, yeah. That's what she said. And I feel like and you say you use a more naturalistic metaphor, which is that it's like going surfing the waves? Yeah. And I really feel like it was just the right time, the right place, the right set came through. And it just so happened that you had a pretty dope crypto crypto and managed to write a barrel.

Andrew Gray  22:47  
Yeah, I wish I could serve. It's gonna happen one day,

Samuel Wines  22:50  
once we set up the lab in, in a bar in North Queensland, I'll have to do some some board meetings. It's bound to happen.

Andrew Gray  22:59  
All right. So there, we were looking down, looking down this giant set of barrels. And here comes COVID. And we got through it

Samuel Wines  23:10  
COVID came and I think we got through it because of I mean, the first anchor tenant that we had in was RadTech. So that's, that's John Lee working on, essentially, rat tests, but not just not just right.

Andrew Gray  23:26  
So this technology can be applied as a sensor to detect very low concentrations of lots of different things. Like if you can get an antibody on it, you can use his technology to like the sensitivity of his is, I think, five times more sensitive than normal rat tests. That's if you want to, you know, go for that. But I think he was also looking at, you know, AMRs and and microbial resistance. Absolutely, as well. And who knows what he's up to now? Yeah, it

Samuel Wines  23:54  
was so exciting being able to so he actually only recently just moved out of the lab after about two and a half years.

Andrew Gray  24:00  
Yeah, no, he needed more space.

Samuel Wines  24:03  
Yeah. So that's really exciting. I mean, that's the whole point of the lab, right, is to be able to support people while they're trying to get on their feet and then scaling up and out. to I guess, bigger and bigger and better places.

Andrew Gray  24:17  
Yeah, absolutely.

Samuel Wines  24:19  
Okay. And then. So on top of that, then we had who was next in Pureflow. Pureflow. Came in next. Oh, yeah. So it was to COVID. related? Yeah. So then Pureflow came through with, so they've got like the cold plasma tech that is helping treat air to remove airborne pathogens. So obviously COVID But there's quite a lot of other things that it can also remove, too. Yeah. So that was sort of something that would be installed a plugged into like a haitch vac system to be able to sterilise the coils. There was a bit of research going into that.

Andrew Gray  24:56  
Yeah, I mean, it can interface with a lot of other existing technologies and we can talk to you more about that. I know that they are looking to just like it can integrate into, you know, other types of devices potential

Samuel Wines  25:08  
collaboration in the works that's popped out of colabs. Yeah,

Andrew Gray  25:11  
but we'll we'll let them do that announcement. Exactly. But that yes, they were number two. And I think after that vowel got in touch with a vowel next. I feel like it was it was

Samuel Wines  25:23  
That's right. Because then we and by the way, this is this is. So we, we've been trying to convince the government to give us a bunch of money. Yeah, which we can talk about openly now. Because I'm pretty sure we're allowed to.

Andrew Gray  25:40  
Yeah, I don't think on mine.

Samuel Wines  25:42  
But yeah, anyway, so we're like Andrew's like, yep. Yep. The government's gonna kind of give us money. And they said, Yes. But it was just, it took me five years to get that, yes. took five years to get the Yes. And then one extra year to get the

Andrew Gray  25:55  
length of that conversation, the relationship of just, you know, understanding where they were coming from and what they were hoping to see. And, you know, being included in on some of the conversations where they tried to bring other you know, overseas entities to do essentially what we're doing, and you know, not working. And finally, it was, yeah, we'll give you will give you a shot, but we're only giving you x amount, so you don't end up you know, TIG welding Mexico. Yeah,

Samuel Wines  26:20  
something like that. But that was so funny, because, obviously, you know, so great. Like, we would not be here without it. But I think we both might have thought that it'd be like I hit next pay run. Yeah. Maximum. Yeah. So we ended up having to, cuz we got all this interest. And people wanted to use the warehouse. We had to buy like benches from Bunnings. And there wasn't proper lab benches. But people were like, Yeah, I need space. So we'll make it work. I remember just being like, gosh, this is this is our Breaking Bad. And it looks so weird. Just like if people could see in through just what was going on in this big empty warehouse. But um, yeah, we ended up getting through it. We ended up getting the money and we ended up being able to buy a proper lab benches and put them all together ourselves. This would have been 2021 2220 21.

Andrew Gray  27:11  
Yeah. So we might have came through. We bought the lab benches,

Samuel Wines  27:15  
and that was the end of 2021 Start of 2022. Correct? Yeah, cuz they arrived in January 20. Oh, we still pay a lease on that gas bottle that we lent to Monash self storage, because they needed a gas bottle because their one died while they were in the middle of lifting. When that happened to the lifting. Were paying for that lease. Yeah. Yeah, I saw it on the Super gas account. I'm like, that's the one that we lent to them because they didn't have a spare gas bottle and it was stuck halfway through taking the lab bench. That was the truck and the guys just like I guess I'll just wait here then.

Andrew Gray  27:57  
run off and get a new gasket. Ah,

Samuel Wines  27:59  
that was that was that was very funny. They sorted it out for us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We had to follow up by her project. The freeze freeze drying causation. Yeah, actually,

Andrew Gray  28:12  
we got hit up recently for someone else that's looking for that particular service.

Samuel Wines  28:17  
We just got it. She said she'd be interested in sharing the resources with others who might want to use it.

Andrew Gray  28:23  
Yeah, we could put that into unit 20 For sure. But um, so that was January we got the benches got them all hooked up. Had your you know had Jonno from main switch electrical. Come in and wire it all up legend? Yeah. And yeah, we actually had my benches, huh. That was after a lot of assembly.

Samuel Wines  28:43  
Yeah. Oh, my gosh, the amount of Assam. I just, ah, yeah. And we both we both had battle scars from putting those together and, like getting pinched and stuff, by the way. Yeah. But yeah, we got it done. And then as soon as we as soon as the benches were done, it was just because people could say the thing.

Andrew Gray  29:02  
That was one of the challenges definitely was that people would come into the lab, and unless they really needed the space, they would appreciate what we were trying to do. But I get it, but I don't see it. Yeah. And then once the lab bench is around, it's like, oh, it's a lab.

Samuel Wines  29:17  
Yeah. And I feel like after that we filled up in about three or four months, we kind of managed to get to almost max capacity, you know, bar one or two benches, which we're kind of offering out to student groups and a couple of other people in our network who are working on interesting ideas. And yeah, so I think

Andrew Gray  29:39  
and then yeah, I mean, from there was we had great wrap in we had oz kelp. I think they got started in March, which was around the time that I guess I had to make that decision because I was still working at Monash tech school. And was not Yeah, you know, it's like that. Do you let go of this branch to grab on to that One Yeah, you

Samuel Wines  30:00  
were the smart one, I had way too much of a appetite for risk. And was I think there's that that view I think only like 25 or 30 grand. I don't know how I survived during that time, like it was the way because as well, like, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs is like, once you, okay, you can't do the high level thinking well, and

Andrew Gray  30:24  
when you're just like, under risk, yeah. And the main ones being like shelter. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, so

Samuel Wines  30:31  
But no, we got through it. And then as soon as, as soon as you came on, I buggered off over to Sweden, because of the h&m, global changemakers Award and the plastic the produce startup that we were working on out of here with a couple of other people managed to get chosen to fly over there and was an early bird winner for the for the tech. It didn't quite get to eventuate, unfortunately. But um, yeah, so I was over there for like, the first six weeks of you starting work here. So yeah, like, I guess I'll just do all the things.

Andrew Gray  31:06  
Now it was, I was we're both pretty busy. I mean, because I think at this point, that was

Samuel Wines  31:11  
when we got got with have another tranche of funding that might be available from a place, which we can't technically talk about yet.

Andrew Gray  31:20  
Oh, just ignore that. But, yeah, there was plenty of work to happen, because now we're looking at, you know, new ideas for new services, we could provide members started surfacing more such as the, and we'd already done it once, right, we've done stereo abroad. So yeah, the innovation facilitation, the the chamber design that with them, set up the experiments, the protocols, so they could, you know, begin testing the efficacy of their testing device for their purification device. And so we've done that sort of, and that was a, you know, wait, I had no experience in that. But we're able to pull that to pull that experiment together. And I think that, you know, basically, I had the same thing happen again, with AWS kelp, where, you know, they needed some help in the lab, I needed someone to help assemble, get stuff together. So there's a bit of prototyping involved. And so we, you know, coordinated with one of their experts overseas to make that all happen. And so, there, there was a it was really good. It was, I mean, that's the thing I, you know, we say about this space all the time is it's like being the uncle, right? Like, it's not your baby, it's like being the uncle. So all these little projects happening around, you get to go, you know, help them out here and there. But, you know, when you're not ultimately responsible, which is nice. But we are ultimately responsible for colabs, obviously,

Samuel Wines  32:40  
yeah. So there's, there is an element of responsibility, but it's kind of just to clarify. I get what you mean, it's like, it's not the same as like, when we go home, it's like, oh, God, is it anything that we need to do for Carlos? Like, there's like, there's an element of always on just because of exactly right. You know, what we do, whereas at least with these projects, you know, you can switch off at the end of a project. Exactly. Right. Yeah. And then so, I mean, yeah, so we're still in 20. Was 2021 or 22. Now, it's 2022 22. Man, so much happened last year?

Andrew Gray  33:18  
Yeah. Yeah, in the end, and then, near the end of last year, you know, getting with that lease becoming available down the driveway. Yeah,

Samuel Wines  33:29  
just in the same carpet in the same warehouse complex. But I mean, by this time, we'd also been exploring other avenues for an additional site. And I think we managed to figure out about, yeah, so we tried to make things happen over and over broody, but there just wasn't enough power. But you know, Adam and the ethical property team are working on some pretty cool stuff. And, you know, it's a it's a pause for now. But there might be an opportunity to continue working with them in the future, should we be able to tap into some funding for infrastructure? All right, so we're back into it after a 4872 hour hires. Yeah. So we were, as always is the case in this industry, we were dragged into another meeting with our most recent member, actually, they haven't fully signed the paperwork, but cortical labs will be looking at supporting in unit 20.

Andrew Gray  34:26  
Really exciting. Oh, man. It's been it's been a long time trying to find ways to work together and support them. And I believe they were actually, I think one of the first people that really pushed us towards doing this, like we didn't have a space.

Samuel Wines  34:41  
That's true, Han actually, I remember you sort of saying this, I was really trying to push to see if we could find a way to support them. And by supporting them also supporting others. So even from the onset, I feel like they really had that, that way of looking at Yeah, absolutely.

Andrew Gray  34:55  
I mean, I think it makes sense for you know, that Startups in their position, you know, that are getting out of the lab, or starting a new space or starting their r&d and feasibility studies, whatever you want to call it, they're all going to run into much of the same problem, which is accessibility of infrastructure. So it's awesome to see people going like, well, how can we help ourselves by giving back, you know, inevitably to the rest of the ecosystem. And so what that looks like, would be, you know, eventually, they're going to scale out of that space that we're providing them now. And that space will then be available for others to use. And whatever way we can, you know, facilitate that, I think that's just a really awesome and positive way for us to operate as little participants in this system.

Samuel Wines  35:47  
It's like helping pave the way to pay it forward in a way. So they come through, they need a whole bunch of infrastructure, we help support with the co creation of that enabling infrastructure. And then yeah, they take what they what they need with them, and then the rest is available for the next generation of, I guess, impact oriented organisations to come through and utilise this space. So yeah, it's very exciting that we've, that we've managed to make that happen, as you said, it's been a long time in the works. And I think that's, that's kind of the side of innovation, or, like, at least this sort of stuff that we don't really talk about that much. It's like, you know, the, everyone wants to move as quick as possible. Everyone wants everything to happen yesterday, but yeah, this is this is, you know, they found an alternate route back in the day. But that's sort of reaching its sort of the limits of effectiveness. And so now they're looking at, obviously, I've looked at partnering with us again, I feel like that that sort of long term ecosystemic thinking where it's like it will if not with us try this place, or try somewhere else. And then who knows if we can support later on?

Andrew Gray  36:54  
Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's an interesting sort of, if you look at the it's not just like a linear progression is it's like a you know, they move into these spaces they grow they expand almost like a you know, heart you know, beating and every time the heart beats, it needs to be able to be bigger for the organism to keep functioning and you know, doing the intended in having the intended impact they they want to have. So it's it's been interesting watching and being a part of this process, and helping how we can just Yeah, feel like we're learning every day.

Samuel Wines  37:30  
Yeah, it's like that analogy. I like that analogy, but his mind there's a better one, I was thinking it's almost like evolution that is evolution by natural selection, then there's like a step function and evolution that is due to a change in the environment, right. So it's like, they within the enabling constraints of the environment they had they kind of managed to reach a point at which it's like, okay, you know, and then it's like another step function into a new environment where it's like now we can adapt and evolve to this larger facility and hopefully be able to scale up operations

Andrew Gray  38:00  
you've basically described described, slime mould

Samuel Wines  38:06  
clinical lab, okay, aka slime moulds. We love you Breton on hopefully that doesn't come across

Andrew Gray  38:14  
Oh, I got a lot of love for slime.

Samuel Wines  38:16  
We have a full textbook on slime moulds somewhere up there yeah fascinating fascinating thing you know they they modelled the Tokyo railway network using slime moulds and found I

Andrew Gray  38:27  
don't know if they modelled it they I know what you mean. Yeah, they didn't like build the Tokyo

Samuel Wines  38:32  
organism in a PhD they they modelled it and then they

Andrew Gray  38:35  
put down the train stations and then yeah, observe the network that the slime mould created between different food sources. Yeah. And

Samuel Wines  38:41  
they found that there wasn't many because I mean, apparently that's like a work of art, the Tokyo public transport system but they managed to find one or two or a couple of different novel connections which they hadn't thought about it

Andrew Gray  38:52  
basically mapped it out the way that they had mapped it out but then added a few and an extra few little side bridges in there. Yeah,

Samuel Wines  39:00  
I thought it was that was anyway, mad digression but we can't expect much given there's been three days but I believe for us like trying to do nonlinear in a linear time format with podcasting. So we were just talking about so I just come back from Sweden after heading over plastic and then you know the innovation facilitation project we've been working on so you've already mentioned a couple so you know we've been helping support stereo bright and Pureflow with being able to test their devices to remove airborne pathogens and there's the by aerosol testing chamber that we kind of an almost almost like a pseudo company that we've spun out of that and so we've brought someone on board to help manage that with this. Then you're the kelp daddy for as kelp. So on a running camp IVF clinic

Andrew Gray  39:55  
Yeah, and the remote kelp daddy, the county the actual kelp daddy. Yeah. Yeah. So Vern, what a name and lots of perfect

Samuel Wines  40:02  
world leading experts in kelp. Yeah, at

Andrew Gray  40:05  
sea. Weiser? Yeah. Yeah.

Samuel Wines  40:09  
Yeah. And then on top of that, like we've been supporting culture on with some of their, like, kind of stepping into the forest. So Stewart's doing some really awesome work using plasma, plasma tech to be able to coat plates and anything, anything really anything, you'd

Andrew Gray  40:31  
want to coat with a biological molecule that retains its function after it's been bound to the surface. I mean, there's a lot. And that was, I guess, one of the challenges, right, it's like, can do so much. You have to narrow down on, you know, what is the most the highest value that you can provide to society? Yeah, exactly. So it's really fat. And then like, just, you know, I don't know how much more we can talk about as tech, but just sounds like, there's a lot of other non intended products that have already been already coming to light. So it's a really exciting iterative

Samuel Wines  41:09  
design, right? Like, you're just going out and speaking to people and they go, Oh, I can see how this could be used in my context. Well,

Andrew Gray  41:16  
yeah, and I think hats off to Stuart and the rest of the team for being able to look at those things as potential solutions to problems that, you know, are out there. And like, I think a lot of people will look at things as a waste product, but, you know, he looked at as a no, this is a value add, you know, just need to figure out how to harness this and utilise it in a better way.

Samuel Wines  41:35  
Is there any other innovation facilitation stuff we've been supporting and 2022

Andrew Gray  41:39  
student groups, so I mean, we're, I think students are definitely the bread and butter of innovation, like bread, butter, I'd say the, the foundation, like because everybody, the weight, the weight, the seeds. Because they're going to be the ones doing this stuff in two or three years time, you know, they're the, they're the ones coming through academia, or, you know, their life's not, you don't have to go to academia to be an entrepreneur, and, you know, uncovering these problems that need to be solved. And so if we can help them, and it's kind of like that a analogy, like to use, you know, we didn't have music, if we didn't have musical instruments out there for people to play, we wouldn't have a lot of musicians. So it's really about engaging them and getting them to, you know, be a part of this, opening up our space to them, so that they can really be immersed, and, you know, the types of things happening here, the different ideas being worked on here, meeting people networking. And just, I guess, learning that things are possible, like, if there is a challenge that you are passionate about solving that you can do it, it's, you know, might not just be, you know, quite often you need a team, it's very hard to do everything on your own,

Samuel Wines  42:54  
especially with the innovation, right, it's like, no individual person can ever grasp the full complexity of a problem or, or the world or anything,

Andrew Gray  43:03  
and the more you understand the problem, the more bias you become, quite often having people that bring that left to centre view on things can open up your, your vision, your view, to new possibilities, new ways of solving these challenges. So I'm hoping you know, and we will be doing more work with students, whether it's work experience, or you know, actually helping guide some of their early ideas towards some sort of outcome, whether it's commercial or paper, but just, yeah, helping where we can because I think having like, that is just such an essential part to innovation is, well, you're not

Samuel Wines  43:41  
gonna It's all theoretical otherwise, right? It's like the practice where the theory meets practice, and that sort of creating those safe to fail environments, because so much of the time the metrics and things that we measure through traditional ways of education is like you need to get it right. And if you fail, yeah, you've

Andrew Gray  44:00  
you're marked against how many things you get right? Not wrong, which is not holistic at all, because things very rarely come right. 100% of the time, and,

Samuel Wines  44:09  
you know, especially when you're pushing the boundaries of what's known. Oh, yeah,

Andrew Gray  44:13  
absolutely. And I think that's such a good point. Safe to fail experiments, and I think we lose a lot of that. And, you know, in our traditional education system, there's just not opportunity to I mean, maybe I don't want to open up that dialogue just yet. It's just Yeah, everything is

Samuel Wines  44:39  
there are incentives that way that the system is structured. It's not that any individual in the system is trying to do anything No, it's more of a an emergent phenomenon of the system as a whole.

Andrew Gray  44:49  
I mean, how Yeah, like education. You know how we do it right now and you're trying to cater to 1000s and 1000s of students there's we don't have the resources with the current system. To be able to, you know, tailor our education for each individual. It's just not it's not feasible. So what you're left with is is sort of like, you know, the round peg needs to go through the round hole. And if you're a square peg then good luck. Yeah. And I

Samuel Wines  45:18  
think that's what's, again, really exciting about luck. So if we flip it from, you know, hindsight, to foresight, now, I think that's what's kind of really exciting for us for 2023 is, you know, looking, instead of look, there's still that paper, we need to chat with Ali about new educational pedagogy and biotech, but that aside, like looking at, okay, great, so we can open up our space and support students or anyone who is actively working on trying to find solutions are systemic solutions to complex problems, whether that's related to, you know, the projects that we're fascinated by, like, can we find a way to biodegrade pee fast? You know, we're having some conversations

Andrew Gray  46:05  
biodegrade, right. Like I, you know, going back to what you said about systemic solution, it's not just about breaking it down. So what could Could we turn it into something of value because once you do that, then it's a much more sustainable thing, versus I think what we spoke about on the call, with Sarah, out of Poland, was, you know, a lot of these solutions, when they biodegrade, things are actually just moving the problem somewhere else. And

Samuel Wines  46:30  
that's the need to have sets. Like when we when we when we also spoke about this then right is like the beauty of what we do. And what we offer here is we we allow students to engage, critical thinking, like and then also the system's thinking and first principles thinking and going okay, like, so what can I extrapolate from from x? And how do I apply that to y? And then what are the ends the water effects? So, okay, great, we've broken down, pee fast. But now we've got two other toxic byproducts, like, what are we going to do with that, like, you know, but if we look at it from a perspective of, okay, maybe we can get a diverse colony of microorganisms that one organisms waste is another organisms food, and then progressively break down something that's a synthetic chemical, that's a part of a technical nutrient cycle into something that's back within the realm of the biological nutrient cycle. And, as you said, you could theoretically use it as a feedstock. You know, like, kinda like we're looking with plastic, the same thing, same concept with plastic. And there are so many options with sin bio for this sort of approach, but it's having to provide people with the tools and the framework and the way of perceiving reality to understand that. Just because it's toxic in this form, doesn't mean that we can't break it, mould it, shape it, change it, and then have something that's actually more akin to something in the natural world, or the biological sort of processes. Because I mean, ultimately, everything's natural, right? Like if you really boil it down, like a, like a hydrogen atom is a hydrogen atom is a hydrogen atom doesn't matter, whether it's in I don't know.

Andrew Gray  48:08  
I'm sure there's like an exception on the chart of elements. I feel like we've made some that don't exist very long. But yeah, I totally agree that you can argue everything that we've used to create synthetic molecules was primarily derived from natural resources,

Samuel Wines  48:28  
and more than likely can be broken back down to those natural resources. And it's just about taking, like a green chemistry or biomimetic approach and going, how can we do this with you know, it doesn't we don't want it to be 1000 degrees that we have to heat it up to? How can we do this in like an energy smart, efficient way that mimics biological processes, or actually utilises them? To be able to get us towards a more circular I guess, would you say camp? Circular toolkit for chemistry or just circular processes for industry? Let's say

Andrew Gray  49:02  
yeah, I think circular processes for industry, because it's not just chemistry, like you're talking about the entire the entire chain, let's scale

Samuel Wines  49:10  
link design, it's like it but might start with green chemistry. But then there's also like, you have to make products from that. And then those products need to be biodegradable, compostable, biocompatible all of those oops, and work and mushroom lights, all of those sorts of things. And and that goes into, you know, how we build communities, which is then part of the bio region cities. And so it's like, at scale, it's has to be scale LinkedIn, when we're trying to do, I guess, transformative or regenerative forms of innovation, we have to be paying attention to multiple scales of size, like how does this impact, you know, an individual society in the planet or how does this impact? You know, I think that is an important scale and then also timescales, like short term, long term, you know, and a lot of the things that we think of when we are really good quote is like, all of the problems of today was solutions of yesterday. And it's so true. And we have to kind of knowingly participate in trying to find solutions to those problems, but not try and problematize or solution eyes, everything and acknowledge that it's a process, it's, it's, this is gonna be a continual thing. So how do we cultivate the skill sets in people to be able to continually try and solve or tackle these things or dance with,

Andrew Gray  50:28  
you know, to be honest, might actually involve certain, you know, certain processes that, you know, in the interim may not be the most regenerative, but we need to understand that not everything is going to happen overnight.

Samuel Wines  50:45  
And it's also like a I mean, that's like the three horizons framework, or thinking of things from a net perspective, rather than, as you said, like, it might be on like, right now, if we do this, it might be bad, but then, you know, we need to do that to get to the good, which, I mean, that's just like such a slippery slope fallacy for some things I can, I can just see how that can be taken. So out of context, but

Andrew Gray  51:11  
yeah, especially if you don't have good oversight. And nobody's holding, you know, the people that are making decisions to account and, you know, where are the lines drawn? And, you know, a lot of that stuff really comes down to, you know, keeping the community informed and transparency. So for like, this is about to go into an advertisement for started

Samuel Wines  51:31  
when you need it. But yeah, I mean, that's another interesting. That's actually an interesting thing that did come out last year. So you were a bit too busy to co author the paper, but I helped with co authoring startup, which is like the standardised, standardised, thank you. Okay. Normally, I'm the one telling you where to point your voice with, with a microphone but standardised reporting on data and initiative. So looking at ways in which we can take information and data from anywhere, from any source from any place in the world? And how do we know what someone means when they say, x or sustainable or regenerative? And like, how can we like what are the outcome measures? How do we know that when they say this, they actually mean it? So you know, can we track what they've done? Or what they mean by this has, where's the funding for Project X come from? Yeah, you know, all of this sort of stuff. And I think, given given that the biggest issue we currently face is the like coming to terms with people in different disciplines. And we've siloed everything in society, that this sort of framework of being able to try and find a way to be able to synthesise data so that we can kind of make sense of the whole just, it's a very, obviously very appealing for myself, like given the transdisciplinary sort of nature of what we're trying to do. Incredibly exciting. But then also, yeah, just just, I guess, a lot to read. And we'd need, we need a four part series with Jack just to sink into startup, which definitely needed I'll write that down, we have to make that happen. But um, yeah, so that was a fun, fun paper, and then designing for coexistence, which is going to be coming out this this year, but was a paper that we worked on last year, you know, exploring ways it was with them, the lead author was Ollie from RMIT. So exploring, you know, how do we given that we have this tools and tech and ways of relating and working with, like biology from a Biodesign perspective? How, how can we ensure that what we're doing isn't just repeating the same patterns and processes of the extractive sort of linear economy and, like the reductionist mindset that we've had, which has led us into a lot of the problems that we currently face, like, you know, if we just start exploiting micro organisms, how is that any different to how we exploited, you know, through colonialization, and stuff like that, other people who we deemed as different to us, like, what differences if we like, it's just, you know, that's an anthropocentric lens, but if we're doing the same thing from like, a biological perspective, you know, that's, it could be, it could be pretty bad, you know, so it's, how do we how do we think about designing for coexistence and acknowledging that we, there's like this element of, into being like we are, we are nature and we are interconnected, we're not separate from and that shift of worldview and acknowledging that the tech that we create and design then goes on to shape us as beings in the world, you know, that sort of framework is really useful to have when you're looking at jumping into synthetic biology or Biodesign, or anything like that and acknowledging the that there's going to be like social ecological effects in addition to you know, maybe being able to generate an income so like, it's like so how do we ensure that there's prosperity across all three of those domains instead of just maximising shareholder returns? Yeah,

Andrew Gray  54:51  
absolutely. I think, you know, one of the big challenges will just be insurance because most of I think the, you know, yet we can do a lot of rational design and you know, A lot of, we've made a lot of leaps and bounds forward in the the rational design of enzymes, you know, which are derived from DNA. And that's, that's really great that the idea that we could just create a protein from scratch to solve a particular problem is really exciting was going to be, you know, a huge shift, I think, in, you know, biotech, when that when that comes about, when we can do it, you know, quickly, accurately and cheaply. Until then, you know, the, the world and the plethora of r&d that's already gone into designing every organism, you know, or the ability for these organisms to evolve and adapt to some of the challenges that they've been living with for millions of years, or they once took my 5 billion

Samuel Wines  55:46  
years of excuse me, billions, r&d through natural selection and evolution like that, they're going to have figured out what works as to use like a phrase of genius,

Andrew Gray  55:56  
not just what works, or in addition to that, also, you know, have, I guess, their own internal frameworks, if you want to think about, like, their entire metabolic, you know, they might be geared to et cetera, adapt to certain problems. So that, you know, those, I think we're gonna be, you know, the, if you want to look at it, I mean, like, nature is a library of solutions to problems that we're, you know, may not have had may not know, that we're having or,

Samuel Wines  56:24  
well, it's already been solved, you know, yeah, aeons ago, but it's a new problem. And as I sort of said, it's like, sorry, to cut you off there. But it's finding and again, this is the whole, like, making sure we do this, but not from an extractive perspective is what really

Andrew Gray  56:38  
what I'm getting at. So like, when we look at where we're getting these solutions from acknowledging, you know, where they're coming from. And so there's, you know, the Kyoto Protocol, that, you know, I don't know, how much of that protocol has actually been followed. But, you know, I, I hope that, you know, here in Australia, at least, there is recognition of the land and, you know, the communities that look after these these lands, you know, when we're actually designing these,

Samuel Wines  57:08  
this was actually a thought process that I had last night at about 1145 at night, and I scribbled it down in the back of my notebook was exactly this, like, so. If we're,

Andrew Gray  57:21  
there's three words in the back of his mind. Yeah.

Samuel Wines  57:25  
But it is, it's like, how do we support let's say, indigenous ecological knowledge of place through through an IP framework? So saying, we start going, oh, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna use, I don't know, this plan or this thing to do X Y, Zed, it's like, well, if these are the traditional Arno's, how do we ensure that there is or something like an IP framework? There is an efficient but yes, not really. IP is like, EP ecological property. I'd say that, and acknowledging that in if you look at the UN, I'm not an expert in Indigenous Australian sort of culture, but it's like, you know, country is a being it is it is it is a it is a process, it is a thing, you know, we all come from country, we are country and, and thinking from that framework, it's like if you're going to take from from country a check if it's chill, and be if it is like, there should be some form of giving back to country. So the answer, you know, if you're making money from something that you've extracted from a living system, at least put 10% back into supporting the ongoing like maintenance and regeneration of that biosphere return on a value. Yeah, and it's not so much like, show me the economic business model for that. It's like for for sustainability. It's more like, show me your sustainability model for your business in a way. It's like, you know, we should, it's almost like having to invert the current way in which we do things, but it's, yeah, look, it's been, that's something that I've been trying to try to come to terms with, like, how can we how can we explore new patterns and processes through like regenerative business models, and, and new ways of organising, which haven't really been done? And so that's other exciting things that we're super passionate about here. It's like, it's not just the biotech, it's also social innovation. So like social technologies, or new ways of innovating, or organising or relating to one another in the natural world, very interested in trying to find ways to support that. Yeah,

Andrew Gray  59:23  
I think the the existing I guess, framework, you know, for how research and r&d gets done, where you have, you know, funding, going into research, you know, that research needs to be protected. So you have these patents generated, you know, that whole system's already been identified to be, you know, sort of redundant, you know, actually harm is more harmful than

Samuel Wines  59:44  
dipoles innovation and more so than actually supporting innovation.

Andrew Gray  59:48  
Yeah, you're excited to see that there's new ways of potentially innovating and resourcing a lot of solutions.

Samuel Wines  59:56  
That's a great segue to doubt. So so so

Andrew Gray  59:59  
I know Just as I mean downs are exciting because they are providing a new framework for how we innovate and

Samuel Wines  1:00:06  
decentralised autonomous organisation for those who might not be super savvy with the web three crypto Lord language?

Andrew Gray  1:00:12  
Well, I think it does need to be separated from crypto because as soon as you use the word crypto, then like, it becomes like, Ah, another Ponzi scheme. Yeah. So I think crypto aside, you know, the idea that you can fractionalize intellectual property, or IP or patents, through, you know, this framework, they have the IP NFT framework, where you can licence out particular technology, you don't have to licence the whole thing, you can licence out a small portion of it, you can licence out a lot of it, you can have all sorts of different variables in there. And it's quick, it's not you're not waiting months and months for things to get signed off.

Samuel Wines  1:00:51  
It's I see it as a as a good stepping stone towards open innovation.

Andrew Gray  1:00:55  
It's, I think, what's nice is that it's a stepping stone away from where we are correct. It's showing that yes, there are other ways of doing

Samuel Wines  1:01:03  
like, I hate to innovate, if h1 Innovation is standard peyten, an IP way of doing business, then IP, NF T's and the fractionalization of IP is kind of like a hedge to innovation, and then h three would be just like full open source, open source everything. But you know, but in

Andrew Gray  1:01:19  
a way that actually, you know, like, there's absolutely examples of open source companies that are doing extremely well, you know, Linux, for example, is probably the most well known one. And when that works, you know, and that's repeatable, you know, in the innovation framework, then that's, that'll be a good will be a great time.

Samuel Wines  1:01:40  
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, as as you know, as you I know, and as you know, like, that's probably something that's really close to our hearts is like, how do we, how do we support that? And obviously, we, we were still have to having to play within the confines of the current system, because that's just the patterns and processes and procedures and protocols that we currently know, and are able to function within. But it is interesting to explore these more, currently theoretical, but Poppy, hypothetically,

Andrew Gray  1:02:07  
there that that cross section right now, theory becoming practice, and yeah, I mean, like, there's been some really successful, you know, completions of, you know, IP development through this web three space and Pfizer coming in to licence technologies from one particular Dow Vida Dow, I think is a really good example of well, not just example. But you know, Canary, I guess, saying, hey, this, this works, and people are seeing value here. So

Samuel Wines  1:02:36  
well, that said, it's like it's, it's the whole Bucky Fuller quote, like, don't just try and change the system design a new one that makes the old one obsolete. And I feel like the rapid innovation in an open framework using something akin to like a doubt, let's just say collective intelligence, like, whether it's whatever it is, it's like, if we just got it from first principles perspective, if we can have a whole lot of bright minds and warm hearts working on complex problems in a transdisciplinary framework, where it's generative, and they're trying to support each other, and there's, you we've done our best to come to terms with one another to mitigate any form of perverse incentives, I feel like that, that that is just a recipe for, I guess, transformative innovation, besides having to do the inner work at realising your own viewpoint, your perspectives, your worldview, and where it's limited, where it's beneficial, how you might project yourself onto others, and also, you know, understanding the inner work so that you can then start to move around and do the outer work as well and come together and understand that other people's perspectives, you know, might not be the same as yours. But there could be a lot that can be learned from, like the transcending and including perspectives to come to this larger viewpoint, which no one could individually get to and sort of see that as being To me that's like, that's innovation in a way, it's like the connection of things that were, you know, prior to this, they were separate.

Andrew Gray  1:03:58  
And I often wonder what that might look like, you know, going from, you know, at least this where we're at right now going from h1 to h2, you know, and then trying to figure out, alright, well, how do we go from there to this more open source more collaborative can

Samuel Wines  1:04:11  
still stick that it doesn't have to be linear, right? So you can be starting, prototyping and doing, like a, like a, like a demonstrator project for systems change now, so we can start a h3 project. And you said, like, that's the beauty of the three horizons framework is that there's always three horizons going at once

Andrew Gray  1:04:28  
you can start a project, you know, actually, understanding what h three is, I think, is actually getting either require a lot of, you know, upfront theory or, you know, my personal approach to everything is like the spaghetti tower approach. Like, you have this destination in mind that you want to get to, or you don't know how you're going to get there. So you just start building and just a variety of macaroni and cheese. Yeah, and you know, whatever ends up standing, what however it looks at the end is they're great, you know, and then that's when you do the continuous improvement and you reiterate on that. So it's more efficient. That would be that's always my approach doesn't mean it's always the best approach them. In fact, I'd say I'd argue that never is the best approach. But it's an approach that always find works eventually,

Samuel Wines  1:05:13  
in a way that allows you to move past analysis, paralysis. 100%. No. And I think that can be a major sort of bottleneck for innovation that stifles you know, what could be a really awesome thing, just being people hardest, I've only had a little bit more information, if only I had a little bit. If only I

Andrew Gray  1:05:31  
always should be nice to get. I can remember the IP lawyers name, but it'd be fun to sit down with him and, you know, just jam out on on this for 15 minutes,

Samuel Wines  1:05:40  
I believe. Yeah, this is BS Tech, we were looking at sort of partnering and collaborating with them to write a, like a white paper on how we could sort of potentially innovate on the current legal frameworks for innovation sets,

Andrew Gray  1:06:00  
specifically, for offices, universities, like how does that, you know, how could that be done differently so that you actually get more, more usable innovation at the end of the day, accessible innovation at the end of the day? That'd be a lot of fun to sit down and say, Alright, well, if we could cast aside our, you know, our biases, and the goal is just to come up with something that could work, you know, instead of just going like, I don't think that'll work. Because

Samuel Wines  1:06:26  
a really like thought experiment for that is thinking of yourself. That's like, so you think of yourself, and then you think of how you would be in that, but not knowing who you are in that system. So rather than like Sam or Andrew, who run the lab, it's like, or like, oh, so and so he's got a PhD postdoc, it's like, you have to consider like, if you're going to redesign the entire innovation system, and you had no idea where you sat like, top or bottom, you know, and then then people start to think a bit more fair and equitable, because it's like, you want to be giving yourself the best chance, but you don't know where you're gonna be. So yeah, I think that's like a really fun sort of framework for thinking about this sort of stuff is like, assume that you have to take yourself and your ego out of it. And go, okay, cool. Like, what would what be the most fair and equitable and distributive way of supporting innovation? Leading with questions rather than having this preconceived answer or notion and sort of? Yeah, I know, it's a really interesting way of thinking about it.

Andrew Gray  1:07:27  
Yeah, I think casting aside those, you know, the existing frameworks that we're so used to using, you know, what is fair and equitable? Like, how do we define that as a term? Like, what does that does? You know, when we're talking about, you know, inputs versus outputs, whether that's finances time,

Samuel Wines  1:07:42  
I think that's the 80s. Yeah, yeah. All of that stuff is

Andrew Gray  1:07:46  
external to that as well. Like what's fair and equitable to, you know, the broader, the broader whole?

Samuel Wines  1:07:52  
I think that's, that's, like, there's a really easy framework that I have is, it's like, if it doesn't cause ecological offence. Yeah. So it's like it, because you can't say pro life? Because that just sounds like a whole other kettle of fish. Yeah. Well, it's like, you know, is your organisation or is your innovation, supporting life's ability to create conditions conducive to life? No, is it? Or, and that could be, as I said, that could be social. It could be psychological, it could be biological, it could be ecological. But you know, does it does it? Does it allow, like, life to keep pursuing higher levels of complexity?

Andrew Gray  1:08:39  
Yeah, and that'd be, yeah, that'd be, that's gonna require not just the solutions to be thought about, but also how they're deployed, you know, and on the business side, so like, you were saying earlier about, you know, these, these products have to be built, or the solutions have the services have to be built, you know, with the world in mind, nature in mind, to do no harm, but go beyond that. And actually, like you say, create conducive conditions conducive to life. But it's,

Samuel Wines  1:09:09  
it is a challenge when you're currently like a game theoretically, in our current situation, like, it's like, get it done as quick as possible. And then you get like network effects maximisation of income, like so we have to acknowledge that currently, the mythologies around competition rather than collaboration, there's this whole story and narrative we tell ourselves that without realising that is a social construction. So we need to actually like pull that apart and go look like you might be moving slower with this sort of stuff. And, and yes, that means you can lose out to network effects. But if, if this is based on something other than maximising income, and it's like, you know, trust, social cohesion and supporting the planet, then you would hope that if we have shifted enough people's perspectives on the matter that that becomes the only option to really do you know, but it's It's gonna be a lot of groundwork.

Andrew Gray  1:10:01  
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And that's why I mean, like, spaghetti tower, right? Like, you're never gonna get 100% buy in. But there's always going to be people with perverse incentives. So I think whatever framework you create has to allow for that. And, yeah, that's just humanity, like you create a creative system, people are gonna game it, you know, even if it's one that supersedes the previous one, there's always

Samuel Wines  1:10:23  
going to be, you know, some form of bad actors who said, yeah, it's just an unfortunate reality. Yeah.

Andrew Gray  1:10:29  
But it's also exciting, because it just forces you to, you know, make better things.

Samuel Wines  1:10:34  
This is true. No, yeah, I think that's a that's a really important way of saying things like, kind of appreciating you. And sometimes I have it as well. And I feel like in different situations, but yeah, that that thinking of like, you know, to use a Ryan Holiday terminology, the obstacle is the way Absolutely. And I think that, especially with that sort of stuff, it's like, Okay, interesting. Okay, so someone's found a way to game acts, like, let's explore ways in which we can make it more inclusive or less game game and ball in that negative sort of way.

Andrew Gray  1:11:02  
Yeah. And turn, you know, what was, as you said, the obstacle into a solution of itself. So, but yeah, I'd look, I'd love to sit down again with Johan was Johann. Yeah. Yehuda. Yeah. And kind of tease this apart, even if it was just 15 minutes of like, you know, because I think when we think about normal and innovation, you know, the, the big question is, where are you getting the money to do this? It's either friends, family, fools, you know, angels, VC, whatever. Maybe it's a problem stakeholder of some sort. But genuinely that money's going in there for some sort of ROI. And how could you recognise the ROIs for, you know, if we were going to open this up to the public and society as a whole, to get involved, which I think is very powerful, because the people that are experiencing the problems the most can now be, you know, stakeholders, instead of just people watching the news and going like, oh, this new X Y Zed came online, or is being worked on at x University, it's like, Well,

Samuel Wines  1:12:05  
I think that's a big part of it. Like, it's the power through empowerment. And I think, yeah, it's, it's, it sounds, it can sometimes sound trite to say, but it's like, you know, essentially, we need to radically redesign the financial and economic system, to be able to do anything that we're talking about here. And like, it's like the big elephant in the room, that's always and it is always the case, but it's like, it needs to be grounded in biophysical reality. You know, and, and we need to acknowledge that it's just a story we tell ourselves about the world and how it works. You know, it's, it's an abstract system in the mind, versus, you know, biological systems, which are like, you know, systems in the world. And it's very easy for us as, as complex adaptive systems that can then map and model ourselves as a complex system and other complex systems in our mind that we can think that map is the territory. Yeah. And I think, yeah, just realising that, get we made this, we made the, we made the whole thing so we can change it, you know, it's just, we need to have the willpower, I guess, and the desire or maybe just the understanding that it's, you know, we're all interconnected. And that what I do to you and do to myself, these are things that we've known forever, we just kind of forgot.

Andrew Gray  1:13:27  
Or just actively ignore. Yeah.

Samuel Wines  1:13:31  
And it's Yeah, thinking, like, you know, we all lose in the mid to long term in the current system, everyone, no billionaire is going to out survive. Even if they do, they're gonna be very fucking lonely. It's gonna suck. Yeah. So, you know, it's, yeah, I guess. From that like regenerative business perspective, it's sort of so much of what I see is like social, social innovate, obviously, the tech is going to be useful. And like, I kind of always say, this is like text, not going to be the thing that saves us having to shift our worldview. But tech will then inevitably be the thing that saves us whether it's new psycho technologies, new social technologies, new biotechnologies. It's just not enough. Yeah, not the extractive tech that we currently kind of not there Silicon Valley Tech that we take,

Andrew Gray  1:14:19  
yeah, look, it's never the solution, but it does open up possibilities. And I think, you know, most tech is created with a problem, you know, solving a problem in mind. I mean, a lot of tech is probably just created to, you know, just for shits and giggles. But at the same time, I think when these new technologies do come out, they do open our eyes to other ways of doing things, other tools at the end of the day. And if someone creates a tool for us to you know, I'm not talking about, you know, social media or anything, but to better get organised to, you know, create conditions where it's easier to innovate across borders and to have a say, then, people you know, if they're actually interested in doing that, They will start to do that. And I think that's, that is an exciting, I guess,

Samuel Wines  1:15:05  
concept of enabling tech. Yeah, right. And rather than, you know, playing to like, the limbic hijacking of the race of the model, but the brainstem, it's like if we actually created tech, and innovations in a way that tried to bring the best adding people, and would promote social cohesion, personal growth and flourishing as well as like, socio ecological innovation, like, you know, so moving from like the win lose dynamic of the current way in which we do business to, which is like, I win, you lose to win win, we both win to Win Win, win win, you win, I when the planet wins, you know, that sort of reframing and being paying close attention to like the metaphors and the language we use, and how that shapes our view of reality and our fundamental values and beliefs. And keeping that front of mind as much as you can always, it's almost like a bit of a mindfulness exercise, just acknowledging and realising when you catch yourself thinking in the patterns and processes of the current system, which we're constantly having to ask, we catch ourselves being like, ah, actually, ya know, it's that it's not a competitor, it's a potential collaborator, it's, you know, seeing this ecosystem is something that we need to grow and nurture and support, and that the more people in this space, the better, you know, even if they might be other people offering lab space, it's like, that's great, because ultimately, there's more people who we can help bring the hell

Andrew Gray  1:16:23  
it helps the ecosystem graph. And if there's more growth in the ecosystem, there's inevitably going to be, you know, more people that need, you know, at least for us spaces to innovate within So, yeah, absolutely agree. It is sort of the rising tide lifts all boats scenario. Yeah, you know, another aspect of this, I think what you're sort of kind of touching on is community. And, you know, it's an interesting time right now with the world sort of moving towards D globalisation, but, you know, you could argue that we're more connected to those around us, we have the potential to be more connected to people across the globe more than ever now. And so,

Samuel Wines  1:17:03  
how do you how do you have that, that regional interconnectedness of place that's contextually specific, but then acknowledging that no bio region is an island, and that you're going to need to lean on social knowledge, capital or even like material from other places to be able to support a healthy thriving ecosystem?

Andrew Gray  1:17:24  
I mean, then there's differences between, you know, the types of the value of connection like, you know, being connected through discord, you know, isn't the same as catching up with your mate, you know, every Friday night? Exactly. So there's different levels of connection, but, you know, there's still like, being able to work together, I think has been it's never been easier than it is today. So

Samuel Wines  1:17:44  
even if it's not together in time and space, you know, it's at least there's a there's an element of togetherness. And I think that yeah, you you kind of can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm grateful that we have things like CERN, but every time we have, you know, big bunch of people in here, you can there's a tacit tactile energy

Andrew Gray  1:18:01  
has so much faster. I mean, because people just the way we communicate, you know, some people need to scribble things down, and some people, you know, and there's just like, their hands a lot.

Samuel Wines  1:18:09  
Exactly. So much of his nonverbal. Yeah, there's, there's a felt experiential. It's like, if you look at the different ways of knowing, right, there's like the intellectual somatic, intuitive, and I'm blanking on the other one, because I've just noticed someone walking behind us.

Andrew Gray  1:18:25  
Yeah, we got some students behind us, but we'll be fine. We can close the door if

Samuel Wines  1:18:30  
we can an emotional and it's like, all of those really important and interesting ways of knowing and also ways of knowing to then innovate. But anyway, I think maybe, maybe we can wrap it up. Maybe we can wrap it up here. It's been about an hour and 15 minutes for our first Yeah, inaugural podcast and 2203

Andrew Gray  1:18:45  
covered a lot. Yeah, I feel like we could have kept ripping there. So we have some goals. We got to get to houden we got to get maybe even someone to talk about community. I'm like, oh crap cross validation

Samuel Wines  1:18:57  
like Paz, Pas, Pas Puskar (Paz Pisarski). Paz I'm just gonna leave it at paz. I got it wrong. Paz, she's a community manager as is Melia from from Blackbird. We should have a chat with them about it because they obviously work in the innovation space. Jason Whitfield as well. So bio, there's a few people we can align up for a conversation. So we'll, we'll consult the calendars and make it happen. Yeah, sounds good. Anyway, thanks so much. All of our maybe two listeners are gone for the air horn. Oh, gosh. Close enough. Thanks so much, guys. Well, thanks so much for tuning in and listening all the way to the end to our very first podcast. We appreciate the support and as I said at the beginning, this is evolutionary process for us we will continually adapt and evolve to do our best to deliver meaning Cool and valuable content to those who wish to listen. If there's any topics you'd like us to cover, or anything else you'd like us to discuss on the podcast or any people you think we should get on board, please just let us know reach out and we will do our best to include into the show. Thanks so much for tuning in.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai