What?
The Deep Tech Otherwise project investigates alternative ways of organising, governing, and materialising science. We study structures – from cooperatives to commons, focused research organisations to stewardship ownership – that rewrite the rules of what 'doing deep tech' means, today.
Why?
Across deep tech fields such as biotechnology, quantum technologies, advanced materials, and outer space innovation, the “lab-to-market” model dominates how scientific research becomes tangible. This pathway – often framed as a linear journey from discovery to patent to venture capital – is treated as inevitable and gold-standard. Yet it concentrates ownership, narrows participation, and aligns scientific practice with extractive economic logics.
The Deep Tech Otherwise project asks what happens when we refuse that inevitability.
_A lab for alternatives
Through research, dialogue, and experimentation, we map and test alternative pathways for building science into the world: cooperatives and commons-based organisations, stewardship and employee ownership structures, open and reparative IP practices, and emerging models such as Focused Research Organisations. We explore models that combine scientific ambition with fairness, sustainability, and collective benefit, in a bid to offer practical ways to materialise science otherwise.
_A catalyst for thinkers and doers
By convening scientists, entrepreneurs, impact funders, and policy thinkers, Deep Tech Otherwise seeks to expand the imagination of what deep tech can be – transforming it from a race for market share into pathways that turn scientific breakthroughs into shared progress.
_An expansion of the possible
Ultimately, our aim is to help create innovation systems that are effective, fair, and grounded in long-term public value by providing tools, evidence, and inspiration for those who want to realise their scientific work differently. If 'you can't be what you can't see', as it were, then let this be not only a testing ground but also a showcase, a menu, and an interjection - to expand what 'doing deep tech' means in practice.
Let’s chat
This is an evolving project – the idea behind this website is for it to be a living hub for resources and research. Want to add something to the website? Want to join in with the project more broadly? (Want to fund us…?) I’m all ears: