PROGRAM DETAIL

bio.t Disrupt MBA program

Register for next Cohort: May 25

Our bio.t Disrupt MBA program guides you through the process of re/designing your business - using Nature’s disruptive design-thinking playbook.

PROJECT BASED. FOR PRACTITIONERS. 10 HRS PW.

MONTH 1-4 STRATEGY

MONTH 5-6 INNOVATION

MONTH 7-8 TRANSFORMATION

so you can ride the crest of the regenerative bio-tech wave

Here’s the detail……

THE GUIDED JOURNEY

the bio.t Disrupt MBA follows the steps of the bio.t canvas™.

  • This is a discovery-led step:

    1. We map your market ecosystem, exploring patterns, and unpacking how the current system has been patterned in (and who the pattern makers are).

    2. We assess for tension - ethical and environmental in-equitabilities, across both time and place.

    3. We vector the interconnections

    4. We identify disruptive regenerative potential - both opportunities and risks.

    The benefits of this process:

    • It reveals un-met market needs and untapped value potential.

    • It reveals levers of system disruption (market and/or industry).

    • It helps you make better strategic decisions on where to play.

    • It starts to build your sense-making abilities

    The synthesized thinking and cross cutting skills you gain:

    • Systems thinking, systems disruption and systems mapping - Donella Meadows systems iceberg and 12 levers of disruption.

    • Living systems thinking - Ecological Succession.

    • Living systems disruption thinking - Panarchy adaptive cycle.

    • Futures thinking - Sohail Inayatullah’s Futures cone and causal layered analysis.

  • This is a discovery-led step:

    1. We map your cradle-to-cradle industry lifecycle, exploring how the current system has been pattered in (and who the pattern makers are)

    2. We assess for bio-material tension (human and Nature) - across both time and place - to reveal where bio-value is being lost, trapped or uncaptured.

    3. We vector the interconnections

    4. We identify regenerative potential - disruptive opportunities and risks

    The benefits of this process:

    • It reveals incredible growth opportunities for disrupting dysfunctional industry practice.

    • It helps you identify untapped bio-potential (human and Nature).

    • It reveals levers of system disruption (industry and/or market).

    • It helps you make better strategic decisions on where to play.

    • It helps build your value thinking and bio-value thinking skills

    The synthesized thinking and cross cutting skills you gain:

    • Value chains, value flow mapping, value thinking - Lean, systems-design thinking

    • Lifecycle circular mapping

    • Living ecological systems principles - ecology and planetary boundaries.

    • Donella Meadows systems iceberg and levers of disruption.

  • This is a discovery-led step:

    1. We identify the dynamics of customer / user / stakeholder segments

    2. For each segment, we learn how to unpack the real pain-points people have (beyond functional "jobs-to-be-done").

    3. You interview them

    4. We translate and code customers’ pain-points into needs (met and un-met, head / heart / hands), and we identify tensions of competing needs between different groups.

    5. We vector and calibrate back with contextual insight (STEP 1: market and STEP 2: bio value chain) to identify pressure points and disruptive regenerative opportunities

    The benefits of this process:

    1. It helps you get way richer lived-experience insight beyond “jobs-to-be-done”

    2. It helps you better prioritise where and how to focus your innovations

    3. It sharpens your design criteria

    The synthesized thinking and cross cutting skills you gain:

    • Sharpened sensing and needs mapping skills - Human centered design / double diamond / insight empathy techniques

    • Customer interviewing techniques - Cognitive behavioural theory iceberg

    • Sohail Inayutallah’s Casual layered analysis.

  • This is the last discovery-led step:

    1. We map the relationships you have (or want to have) with your customers

    2. We explore lifetime value potentiality.

    3. Using Developmental Relationship techniques, we explore your network potential.

    4. We assess for bio-material tension (human and Nature) - across both time and place - to reveal where bio-value is being lost, trapped or uncaptured.

    5. We vector the interconnections

    6. We identify regenerative potential - disruptive opportunities and risks

    The benefits of this process:

    • It uncovers potential areas for creating compounding lifetime value

    • It reveals where you can better scale for growth

    • It helps you identify untapped bio-potential (human).

    • It reveals levers of system disruption (industry and/or market)

    The synthesized thinking and cross cutting skills you gain:

    • Social systems mapping and network thinking

    • Lifetime value thinking

    • Scaling and integrating development with growth - living systems thinking

  • This is the pivotal distillation step:

    1. We distil the insight and value levers revealed from STEPS 1-4, to give clarity on your strategic direction and your role in contributing to your world.

    2. We define your core purpose and your disruptive regenerative potential.

    3. We lay down guiding principles that will strategically steer your business, where and how you innovate, and where to invest your tech and people.

    4. Lastly, we bridge strategy to innovation and crystallise the key design challenges that you take into innovation.

    The benefits of this process:

    • Your purpose has structural strength - not as a comms story of ‘why’, but as a practice of how (demanded in a world of transparency, traceability, whistle blowing and cancel culture).

    • You have much sharper focus on how to steer your business strategically - where to play, where to invest your tech, how to innovate

    The synthesized thinking and cross cutting skills you gain:

    • Insight weaving using Nature’s design thinking principles

    • Purpose and Principles-in-Practice mapping

    • Strategic vectoring and decision making

  • This is an in-depth, iterative discovery and design-led step:

    1. We take the design challenges identified in STEP 5, and we go through a rapid-fire desktop bio-brainstorm - taking our design challenge to Nature and identifying champion species who elegantly solve these challenges

    2. We distill this down as exemplar bio-inspiration

    3. We ideate potential solutions

    4. We work up low-fi concepts for prototyping and testing.

    5. We assess back against our guiding principles

    The benefits of this process:

    • It reveals incredible innovative growth opportunity for creating i. higher performance / ii. higher efficiency / iii. scalable / iv. lower energy / v. less polluting value propositions

    • It reveals how you can disrupt your world (market / industry).

    • It helps you make better strategic decisions on where to invest your operations and tech

    • It builds your bio-value thinking skills

    • It’s inspiring and fun!

    The synthesized thinking and cross cutting skills you gain:

    • Biomimicry thinking

    • Living systems thinking

    • Circular design

    • Systems design

    • Social ethics design

  • This is an in-depth, iterative discovery and design-led step:

    1. We rapid fire explore how you might operationally deliver your value propositions, re/thinking the natural, technical and people resources you might use, as nutrient flows in interconnected systems.

    2. We identify operational design challenges

    3. We take these challenges to Nature, and run a second bio-brainstorm - identifying champion species who elegantly solve these challenges

    4. We distill this down as exemplar bio-inspiration

    5. We calibrate back with our value proposition concepts

    6. We ideate potential solutions

    7. We work up low-fi concepts for potential prototyping and testing.

    8. We assess back against our guiding principles

    The benefits of this process:

    • It reveals incredible growth opportunities for disrupting dysfunctional market and industry practice.

    • It helps you unlock significantly greater customer value

    • It helps you identify untapped bio-potential for greater performance, efficiencies, energy usage, and circular nutrient flows.

    • It helps build your business resilience as global markets price in the cost of Nature

    The synthesized thinking and cross cutting skills you gain:

    • Biomimicry thinking

    • Bio-value thinking (value, value flow, value chains, value potentiality).

    • Living Systems principles.

    • Systems design

    • Circular design thinking

    • Operational systems service mapping

  • This is a design and define-led step:

    1. We use Nature’s life principles to map your Marketing Mix in a regenerative value-contributing way, with a different set of ‘Ps’, to shift your Marketing efforts from costly, noisy, ad-led, push comms to low-cost, high cut-through, pull attraction-led initiatives.

    2. We delve into the foundational pillars of brand authenticity and how to flow that seamlessly into your brand positioning and comms.

    The benefits of this process:

    • It helps you identify stronger ways to gain market cut through, with greater, and lower cost pull attraction and word of mouth.

    • It helps you develop a more cohesive brand position.

    • It helps you better assess marketing opportunities from an ROI perspective.

    • It helps you create customer ‘stickiness’ for greater lifetime value.

    • It helps you build brand legacy.

    The synthesized thinking and cross cutting skills you gain:

    • Brand positioning mapping

    • Brand authenticity principles

    • Regenerative marketing mix management with Nature’s symbiotic reciprocity principles

  • This is a design and define-led step:

    1. We map and unpack all the layers of value you’ve created

    2. We identify leverage points for converting value from equitable value exchanges

    3. We identify opportunities for revenue stream multiples

    The benefits of this process are:

    • It helps you identify more robust revenue stream multiples

    • It helps you build stronger customer lifetime value

    • It helps you avoid common high-risk traps that erode life time value (like bait and hook tactics, locked in subscriptions or broker-in-the-middle margin maximization).

    The synthesized thinking and cross cutting skills you gain:

    • Revenue stream mapping

    • Revenue modularity thinking

    • Lifetime value thinking

    • Net present value thinking

    • Value thinking (value, value flow, value chains).

    • Nature’s symbiotic reciprocity principles

  • This is a define + deploy step:

    1. We pull together and distill all the threads you’ve developed into a future business blueprint

    2. We backcast back to where you are currently, to identify the key streams of what you need to do, when, and how, to get from here to there.

    3. We develop a summary go-to plan that you can execute real life, real time - that energises you!

    The benefits of this process are:

    • You have everything pulled together to give you clarity

    • You finish the program with a solid blueprint and go-to plan that are both rigorous, and cohesively aligned

    • You are primed for disruptive regenerative biotech opportunities

    The synthesized thinking and cross cutting skills you gain:

    • Business design blueprinting

    • Strategic planning

    • Backcasting

  • Each part of the bio.t™ canvas comes with a toolkit, built from what we learned in Beta testing. Served up simply.

    What NOT to do: 1. Practice traps to avoid. 2 Models to avoid. 3. Mindset shifts to make

    WHAT to do: 1. Life-led design principles. 2. Biological champion species (to inspire). 3. cutting edge Biomimicry business case studies

    HOW to do it: 1. Template. 2. Ten x questions to ask. 3. Distillation canvas with decision criteria framework

  • NO Tired 20th century thinking. NO tired technocrat “best practice” examples from lazy talking heads. NO pale-male-stale consultancy speak. NO death-by-power point. NO long docs to read. NO ad-man soundbites and big stats in size 70 font with nature stock images. NO fluff. NO waffle. NO BS.

    You're welcome.

WHAT MAKES IT SPECIAL

Structured program

You get a proven program for strategic business re/design, that Melissa has tested and refined with both groups of exec, entrepreneurs, and clients 1-1.

Live with Melissa

You get regular live airtime with Melissa in all Zoom sessions. Design sprints are in breakout rooms of 1, with Melissa circulating the ‘Zoom room’, so you get your questions answered real time.

Personal 1-1 coaching

You get what you personally need with 2 x individual coaching sessions with Melissa over the course of the program. You can time these sessions to best suit you.

Small cohorts

We cap numbers so you don’t get lost, and always have airtime to contribute. There’s magic in small - it’s intimate, it accelerates your learning, and your accountability to take action!

Rapid Application

You get homework that is relevant to re/designing your business, real time. These help with learning, keep you accountable, and ensure you get the most from your investment.

Peer accountability

We know accountability is as powerful as showing up (Melissa researched it for a client). So we buddy you up with a peer, to help keep you honest. You’re welcome :-).

Cutting edge examples

You benefit from hearing about the latest global biotech start-up case studies, hot off the press, from Melissa’s MSc in Biomimicry.

Comprehensive toolkit

You get a workbook for every step. With templates, step-by-step guides, thinking models, design principles, decision frameworks. Curated and distilled - all the heavy lifting is done.

  • “It is hard to express in words just how incredible my experience working with Melissa was. Her structured design-thinking program has given me a solid base to completely redesign my business. It has truly exceeded all of my expectations.”

    Sophie Poelman, Founder Lof

  • “Melissa’s energy, empathy and experience have led me to believe she is a real world walking Wonder Woman! Within a short-time frame Melissa was able to help me craft the right business plan and strong brand positioning to attract investment and move forward into early stage market entry. Without her help I would have struggled to get to where I am now!”

    Angus Brown, Founder Ārepa

  • "Melissa helped me discover potential I hadn’t even thought I had. Her method has the unique ability to help connect the dots, with an easy framework to follow. This was hugely valuable for my business strategy and I’m so appreciative to her insights and energy.”

    Jayne Chater, Founder JC, Altris and Professionelle

  • “Melissa is a super power. She serves up gold. Her process is a real gift - she has this amazing way of getting to the core essence of the challenge and building up the process to help you make quality decisions. Her insights and frameworks are world leading. The results speak for themselves. She’s engaging, empathetic, purpose driven and challenging; and she cares deeply.”

    Andy Hamilton, CEO The Icehouse

  • “Melissa’s expertise in design-led thinking is outstanding. She is challenging, rigorous and super strategic, with an incisive understanding of an organization's un-realized potential. Her process was revelatory. The way I thought the organization delivered value wasn't correct. Both the challenge and the opportunity, were bigger. Her process brought this into sharp focus. Melissa operates at the top of her craft, with the upmost integrity.”

    Dr Sandy Callister, Board member World Vision

  • "Melissa is quite simply a world class design practitioner. Her process exposes core challenges and provides a clear strategic way forward. I was consistently impressed with Melissa's ability to balance strategic and commercial demands within environments that are rapidly evolving.”

    Abraham Gibson, Board member World Vision and serial tech entrepreneur

  • "Melissa is the real deal. Bundled in an effervescent parcel of infectious optimism, Melissa has a rare ability to cut through rhetoric and business myths to pinpoint the true strategic, commercial, problems. Melissa settles for nothing less than excellence. She has an enviable know-how on all aspects of modern business practice to add to her capabilities as a stunning marketer."

    Helen Carter, CEO Cancer Society

  • "Melissa transformed us into marketing-led company with aplomb. She transformed our product ranges, our brand, our design, our communications… that will serve us for years to come. Her winning awards is a testament to this transformation. She is leaving behind a strong platform for future growth."

    Malcolm Rands, Founder ecostore

  • "Melissa helped us define our place in the world. Where we want to play, the unmet market need and importantly- our superpowers. A powerful, robust and inspirational process. Melissa is a superpower of insight. Highly recommended!"

    Dr Sue Watson, Founder Leaderful

  • "Melissa design thinking skills have been instrumental in helping us unlock our innovation potential. She has an uncanny ability to cut through big problems to identify what’s broken, what works and what can fly. She can see value potential and knows how to unlock it – both in the business and in people. I’d highly recommend her to any business leader wanting to reset and scale up their business"

    Richard Wyeth, CEO Miraka

  • "Melissa is a calm, holistic thinker. She can combine what are typically thought of as 'fluffy' concepts with quite a 'hard' edge of frameworks and outputs. It’s magic combo. She provides our Masters students with a way to see, and move through the complexity of a system. She gives order to the disorder and gets people unstuck. This is the key to momentum - forward motion. It's awesome!"

    Sarah Hindle, GM Tech Futures Lab

HOW IT WORKS

Each step in the program works in a 3-week cycle:

WEEK 1 - Kick-off 3 hour Zoom interactive learning session. Working in mini design-sprints, with good time for Q&A.

WEEK 2 - We regroup on Zoom for 1 hour of deeper learning, Q&A, reflective discussion and group accountability.

WEEK 2 - You connect with your buddy, for peer support and accountability, and work offline to complete assigned tasks.

The 2025 cohort dates are…

YOUR 3 OPTIONS

MONTH 1-4 STRATEGY

MONTH 5-6 INNOVATION

MONTH 7-8 TRANSFORMATION

STRATEGY

$2,380 USD

bio.t METHOD STEP 1- 5

  • 10 sessions

Register

INNOVATION

$3,380 USD

bio.t METHOD STEP 6 - 7

This is right for you if you:

  • Are itching to get stuck into innovation

  • Are out to level up your disruptive design skills with a biomimicry lens

  • Understand the advantages of flowing strategy straight into innovation

Register

TRANSFORMATION

$2,380 USD

bio.t METHOD STEP 8 - 10

This is right for you if you are:

  • Restless to make real change happen

  • Need to know how to lead transformation in your team

  • Ready to commit

Register

HOW IT COMPARES

against other similar online courses

Register interest

FAQs

  • The bio.t Disrupt MBA takes you step-by-step through the process of re/engineering your business, using the bio.t™ canvas. The 3 big things that set it apart from other MBA and business design processes is that :

    1. It is rooted in the disruptive context of the living world and the lived experience (where all the big opportunities are).

    2. Each step explores and leverages biological patterns of value potential. This is the magic. So you work from Nature’s blueprints, and hardcoded design principles that have been proven to work for 3.8B years (high performance, high efficiency, high scalability, low energy, low polluting).

    3. Each part is intentionally ordered in hierarchical sequence. So you make better strategic decisions on where to play, how to innovate, where to invest your tech, how to position yourself (so i. you avoid the high risk - high churn “faster, cheaper, newer” parity plays, and ii. are way more intentional to avoid wasting your time and money).

  • No! This course is designed to be as accessible as possible. No prior knowledge is required. You don’t have to be a biologist, or even a design thinker, to do this. All you need is an entrepreneurial mindset.

    Whilst Melissa has undertaken her Masters in Science in biomimicry, she is a strategic transformation specialist. She’s done all the translation work to make things easy for you. The beauty of using Nature’s design thinking playbook is that it strengthens both your decision making (THINK) and executional performance (DO).

  • Each step comes with a toolkit, crafted from what Melissa learnt in Beta testing. The toolkit comes in 3 parts:

    1. What NOT to do: 1.1 Practice traps to avoid. 1.2 Models to avoid. 1.3. Mindset shifts to make

    2. WHAT to do: 2.1. Life-led design principles. 1.2. Biological champion species (to inspire). 1.3. Cutting edge Biomimicry business case studies (to showcase what’s possible)

    3. HOW to do it: 3.1. Template to use. 3.2. Questions to ask. 3. Distillation canvas with a decision criteria framework for you

    What you DON’T get is:

    NO Tired 20th century thinking. NO tired technocrat “best practice” examples from lazy talking heads. NO pale-male-stale consultancy speak. NO death-by-power point. NO long docs to read. NO ad-man soundbites and big stats in size 70 font with nature stock images. NO fluff. NO waffle. NO BS.

    You're welcome.

    1. You need to have a clarity on your overall challenge, and market / industry space you play in. You don’t need the detail, you just need to have something to work with.

    2. You need to be ready and prepared to do the work. This is your beautiful business and whilst we’ve paced it nicely, a guided process only works as well as the effort you put in. Thankfully there’s lots of energy and inspiration to keep you motivated.

    3. You can be in any sector, of any product / service / social movement type, and of any for-profit / not a for profit type.

  • Yes! We offer a 25% price discount for Not for Profits, Self Employed, and dedicated regenerative Impact players. We also offer scholarships to cover 50% of program fees, for those who are of the following:

    • are Māori, Pacific Peoples, First Peoples, or First Nations indigenous peoples

    • are a refugee or displaced person

    • are over 65, or under 20 years of age

    • students, between jobs, not employed, or financially distressed

    • pre-revenue start-ups

    To be considered for the scholarship, please email us and we'll review and come back to you within 2 working days.

  • The time commitment for this course is 2-4 hours per week. The only fixed part is our weekly live sessions. You have self-paced exercises to do during the week, to cement the learning, and get traction in re/designing your business.

  • Life happens. We get it. Firstly, no stress as we record all live sessions, and share them after every session. But we do cap non-attendance to 2. This helps ensure the live group sessions maintain group dynamics. What you contribute to the group is just as important as what you get out of them (yup, it's one of Nature's principles).

  • Yes, we do offer, and have run, this course in-house. The benefit of in-house is we can customize it to suit your needs. Please email Melissa directly and we can create something that's just right for you.

Register interest

got more questions?

say hello

melissa@tensegrity.bio