What it takes to make it: profile and characteristics of DIY bio laboratory founders

Abstract

As important antecedents of the emerging DIY laboratory movement, the aspects of profiles and characteristics of those pioneers who establish DIY laboratories have remained under-researched in extant literature. In order to address this issue and explore common profiles and characteristics of DIY laboratory founders, by employing content analysis, this paper analyses secondary data on 23 founders/co-founders of eight DIY bio laboratories that are publicly available (DIYbio.org). The results reveal that a common profile of a DIY bio laboratory founder is someone most likely to be highly educated (often times PhD), with experience and expertise in the field of science and has strong ideological beliefs. Additionally, the founders/co-founders have characteristics of entrepreneurship, research, ideology and community that strongly advocate for open source sharing of scientific information and for the democratisation of science.