New Deloitte Report Details the Potential of Biotechnology to Bring New Life to People, Products and the Planet

New York, June 20, 2024

Key takeaways

• The second installment in Deloitte’s “xTech Futures” series highlights BioTech as one of many “xTech” domains — exponential and variable technologies that may prove to become table stakes for future business strategies.
• Rich with case studies and interviews with biotechnology pioneers, the report explores the current inflection point in biotech access and opportunity, and helps organizations identify their role in the biotech economy through the lens of three chapters — “People,” “Product” and “Planet.”
• Biotechnologies are more relevant to a broad spectrum of organizations than they may appear to be at first glance. The biotech revolution is currently brewing, largely unnoticed, but is poised to create a significant shift similar to the shift of computation from analog to digital.
• The report also cautions the urgency of the challenges we face — from climate change to global health crises, from food insecurity to resource scarcity — and underscores that the solutions to these challenges may lie in our ability to leverage biotech effectively and responsibly, working with nature instead of against it.

Why this matters

Biotechnology is relevant today for any enterprise that employs people (who seek to be healthier), delivers products (that need to be more efficient and effective) or is geographically located on planet Earth (which requires more sustainable industry). Following the inaugural “xTech Futures” report in 2023, which looked at space technologies, the 2024 report explores a topic much closer to home. Less on what rests above us, more on what lies within us. Among the findings: Biotechnologies open up a market for more players to revolutionize health care, leapfrog the competition, and restore the planet, delivering an opportunity for businesses to engineer with biology in a new era of corporate focus.

From rapidly engineered life-saving therapeutics, ecological replacements for traditional textiles, and biological enzymes that dissolve plastic waste, the biotech landscape has expanded to include a wide array of innovations — and this report helps organizations make sense of the change and pinpoint areas to play in based on their specific goals.

Deloitte structures considerations for “People,” “Product” and “Planet,” to reflect this breadth and the potential biotechnology offers in each area:

• People: A century of learning and invention has taken humankind from an average at-birth lifespan of 32 years to up to 80 years, from strep throat killing around one-fifth of those infected prior to antibiotics to today being a minor inconvenience. Where will the human experience go next, and could today’s breakthroughs extend our tomorrows, empowering us to live even longer and better lives?
• Products: Once, synthetic materials represented a technology high point. Now, we’re learning that products can be both engineered by humans and entirely natural in composition, offering a unique chance to lower their ecological costs and increase their efficiency and effectiveness while we reproduce biological materials on our own terms. How does this shift affect design, manufacturing and consumer behavior?
• Planet: It’s possible the solution to climate change may lie not with organizations but with organisms. Harnessing natural processes can help heal air, soil and water; provide more sustainable energy; and preserve biodiversity. Does the hope we need for reactive restoration and proactive prevention of ecological damage lie in biotech?

Key quotes

It’s intuitive that biotechnology innovations figure to improve both the quality and span of human life. Less obvious, but equally compelling, is biotech’s potential to radically improve product manufacturing and the health of the planet. Increasingly, the most important cues we can take and build upon are the ones nature has already established. We’re evolving from manipulating nature to emulating it.

– Mike Bechtel, chief futurist and managing director, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Biotechnology isn’t just about building with biology — it’s about bringing humanity back in sync with nature. Since the Industrial Revolution, so much of humanity’s progress has been made at nature’s expense. Now, instead of depleting the natural world, we can learn from and create with it, ushering in a new era where both prosperity and the planet can coexist.

– Raquel Buscaino, U.S. novel and exponential technologies lead, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Deloitte BioTech report highlights

From humanity’s earliest days, the grace and efficiency of the natural world has inspired our advancement, but modern biotechnology takes our relationship with nature a step farther. Humans today are not just being inspired by biology, we are engineering with biology itself. Deloitte’s report chronicles this transformation and spotlights how life sciences, health care services, consumer products and sustainable agriculture are industries primed to see the benefits of biotechnologies most immediately through first-person accounts of the experimentation already taking place.

Biotechnology helps patients avoid unnecessary trips to the doctor — and can help provide more accurate health data to inform patients. It can increase the speed of drug discovery and makes drugs safer by avoiding off-target issues and development liabilities. It helps humankind grow more food and protects the planet from the effects of mass agriculture, while also guiding the creation of products and packages that use circular materials with potentially endless reuse and incentivizing us to ditch products that harm our planet. Understanding the workings of life at their fundamental level even has implications for a new generation of information technology.

What will it take to unleash this potential? Part of the answer may lie in coordination. Many of the players and innovations that are poised to fuel coming advances are operating independently from one another. Within this ecosystem, there is a place for conveners to foster critical connections. Deloitte’s IndustryAdvantage^™ approach is one model that promotes that kind of collaboration and cross-pollination across industries, organizations and disciplines.

Looking ahead, the report finds many entrepreneurs believe biotechnology will join artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing as the major “step changes” of the coming quarter-century. Among these three, biotechnology currently receives the least fanfare. But that may change.

The exponential technologies in the new study don’t fit into familiar information technology categories, but they are just as likely to change the ways we work and live. In this sense, the 2024 “xTech Futures” report is a complement to Deloitte’s annual “Tech Trends” report. What will your organization’s role be?

To download the full xTech Futures BioTech report, visit here.

About Deloitte

Deloitte provides industry-leading audit, consulting, tax and advisory services to many of the world’s most admired brands, including nearly 90% of the Fortune 500^® and more than 8,500 U.S.-based private companies. At Deloitte, we strive to live our purpose of making an impact that matters by creating trust and confidence in a more equitable society. We leverage our unique blend of business acumen, command of technology, and strategic technology alliances to advise our clients across industries as they build their future. Deloitte is proud to be part of the largest global professional services network serving our clients in the markets that are most important to them. Bringing more than 175 years of service, our network of member firms spans more than 150 countries and territories. Learn how Deloitte’s approximately 457,000 people worldwide connect for impact at www.deloitte.com.