Challenge:

My Green Lab was founded in 2013 because of one neuroscientist’s frustration with the heavy environmental impact of scientific research. By 2020, seven years after its founding, My Green Lab had captured the attention and partnership of some of the world’s leading biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and leading research institutions. With a strong new leadership team and a board led by successful entrepreneurs, the organization sought expert guidance on how to rapidly scale up its engagement in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and other research-intensive industries with a global solution.    

Altruist was retained to partner with the executive team and board of directors to develop, fund and help execute what would need to be a focused, multi-pronged effort to achieve dramatic organizational acceleration. Success would mean changing the day-to-day behaviors of tens of thousands of researchers in operations consuming hundreds of billions in annual expenditure creating a massive environmental impact every year. The key focus was developing the organization’s already strong strategic plan to the next level of precision: a world-class, investment-grade business plan, along with clear, practical guidance on how to fund and execute it. 

This “investment grade” characteristic was critical: one of the plan’s proposed developments was the creation of a for-profit subsidiary company, a certification body that would house the My Green Lab certification program and provide software and additional resources to help the organization scale. This strategy would allow for outside commercial investment and also enable the certification to be overseen by an independent third-party that creates the level of rigor and transparency necessary for rapid market uptake. In addition to launching a $2.5m investment drive to fund the subsidiary, the plan targeted new program and contributed revenue efforts and the creation of deeper, more focused performance metrics and a consolidated business intelligence dashboard.