The Chemistry Playbook: The Hidden Assumptions Holding Biological Companies Back
TL;DR
Most biological companies are still operating with commercialization assumptions inherited from chemistry. These assumptions influence everything from R&D and field trial design to sales training and product positioning. While chemistry products are designed for predictable outcomes across broad environments, biological products are inherently contextual and system-dependent. The first step toward building a biology-based playbook isn't changing the product—it's identifying the chemistry assumptions already hiding inside the business.
Introduction: Once You See It, You Can't Unsee It
One of the most useful concepts I've developed over the last few years is something I call the Chemistry Playbook.
It's not a formal framework. You won't find it in a business textbook.
It's simply a collection of assumptions that biological companies unknowingly inherit from an agricultural industry that was built around chemistry.
And once you see those assumptions, you start seeing them everywhere.
You see them in:
field trial design.
product positioning.
sales training.
boardroom conversations about scaling.
The challenge is that many of these assumptions made perfect sense for chemistry. They just don't work as well for biology.
What Is the Chemistry Playbook?
The Chemistry Playbook is built on a simple idea:
One product.
One targeted action.
One predictable outcome.
Broad applicability.
Some examples of foundational products that revolutionized society as we know it today are nitrogen fertilizer, glyphosate, and penicillin.
These products perform a specific function and generally behave predictably across a wide range of environments.
Because of that predictability, agriculture built systems around consistency and scale.
The industry became exceptionally good at identifying products that could work almost everywhere.
And that success shaped how we think about commercialization today.
How the Chemistry Playbook Shows Up in Biological Companies
The assumptions often sound reasonable on the surface, but companies must keep in mind that these core assumption permeate throughout the whole company in ways many companies don’t realize. In science, we often say you get with you screen for meaning when ask a specific set of questions or you start with a specific set of assumptions, you will only ever get results that are based on those assumptions. So what do some of these assumptions sound like?
Let’s target corn, soybean, small grains, and to get into Canada let’s test on canola.
There is 99 million corn acres in North America.
Sales teams need simple messaging, let’s not talk about mod of action.
Let’s hire additional sales members in the Southeast and Southwest to enter into those markets this year.
So when you lead with those assumptions, other parts of the organization must also lead with those same questions.
In R&D
Screening assays are designed to identify broad applicability.
Experiments focus on finding universal responses.
Variability is often treated as a problem to eliminate.
In Commercialization
Messaging focuses almost exclusively on yield and ROI across regions and crops.
Mode of action gets buried.
Product positioning becomes increasingly generic.
In Sales
Reps are taught what the product does and focuses only on features.
They are rarely taught why it works.
Conversations become outcome-focused rather than system-focused.
We rarely talk about solving real-world problems.
In Field Development
Trials collect only yield data.
Trials large number of trials are run that spans across geographies and crops.
There is a broad yet shallow level of field trial information.
Contextual information often gets overlooked.
The conditions under which products succeed or fail remain poorly understood.
None of these decisions are irrational.
They're simply rooted in assumptions built for chemistry.
Why Biology Doesn't Fit the Mold
Biology operates differently.
Biological products are often working through systems rather than acting directly on the host.
Their performance depends on:
Environment
Geography
Soil characteristics
Management practices
Host interactions
Weather patterns
That doesn't make biology weaker. It makes biology contextual.
The same microbial product will perform differently in North Carolina than it does in Nebraska.
And not because it failed, but because biology responds to the environment around it.
Why This Is Actually Good News
Many people view biological complexity as a weakness. I see it as the opportunity.
Chemistry helped agriculture achieve extraordinary gains in productivity. But the challenges we're facing today look different.
We are dealing with:
Increasing disease pressure
Resistance development
Input costs
Labor shortages
Weather volatility
Global conflicts
We’ve switched from short-term gains to thinking about long-term resiliency. These are system-level challenges that require system-level solutions
And to me, this is where biology shines. Not as a replacement for chemistry, but as a complement to it.
The First Step Toward a Biology Playbook
Most companies assume the first step is changing the product.
I disagree.
The first step is identifying the assumptions already operating inside the business.
Questions worth asking include:
What assumptions are built into our R&D screening process?
Are we designing experiments for nuance or broad application?
Are we scaling from ecosystem fit or total addressable market?
Does our sales team understand how the product functions within a production system?
Are we measuring success beyond yield?
These questions can be uncomfortable.
That's usually a sign they're important.
The Opportunity Ahead
The future of biological agriculture won't be built by companies that simply develop better microbes.
It will be built by companies willing to challenge the assumptions they've inherited.
Because the biggest obstacle to biological adoption isn't always the science.
Sometimes it's the playbook.
And the first step toward building a biology playbook is learning to recognize the chemistry assumptions hiding in plain sight.
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The Chemistry Playbook is a set of commercialization assumptions inherited from decades of developing and selling chemistry-based products. It prioritizes broad applicability, predictable outcomes, simple messaging, and large market opportunities.
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Biological products operate within living systems. Their performance is influenced by environmental conditions, management practices, geography, and host interactions. This makes them more contextual than chemistry-based products and often requires a different approach to development, positioning, and sales.
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No. Biology is not a replacement for chemistry. The greatest opportunity comes from integrating biological and chemistry-based tools together to improve resiliency, manage risk, and address increasingly complex agricultural challenges.
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Start by examining the assumptions guiding your organization. Look at how you design experiments, position products, train sales teams, and define success. Often the biggest barrier to scaling biological products is not the science itself, but the chemistry assumptions built into the business.
