Professional Stakeholder Frameworks

Stakeholder Framework Overview

Our stakeholder framework was designed to ensure that every conversation enriched Mystiphage with real-world insights and practical expertise. By structuring our engagement into distinct phases, preparation, outreach, dialogue, follow-up, and integration, we created a clear pathway for gathering feedback, validating assumptions, and refining our approach. This framework underlined our commitment to collaboration, transparency, and adaptability throughout the Mystiphage journey.

Identification and Background Research

The first step in our framework focused on targeted stakeholder identification and thorough background research. Before any outreach, team members consulted a centralized “Stakeholder Contact List,” cross-referencing individual expertise with our problem statement and literature reviews. We devoted time to reading key publications, watching recorded talks, and understanding each stakeholder’s affiliations and past achievements. This preparatory work ensured that our questions were tailored and informed, demonstrated respect for each stakeholder’s time, and set the stage for meaningful dialogue.

Question Development and Presentation Preparation

Armed with stakeholder-specific knowledge, we crafted concise, open-ended questions that leveraged each expert’s unique perspective. We ensured that every query aligned with the stakeholder’s background, whether probing legal nuances in biotech patenting or exploring scale-up challenges in phage manufacturing. To make a polished first impression, we accompanied these questions with a brief introductory presentation: highlighting Mystiphage’s goals, its progress to date, and the specific areas where we sought guidance. Below are a few of the many sample questions we asked during our stakeholder interview meetings:

Outreach and Interview Execution

Once our questions and materials had been finalized, we sent personalized emails under formal salutations, referencing each stakeholder’s work and clearly stating our intent. We scheduled the interviews using the university’s Zoom account and posted meeting links in a shared communication channel so that interested teammates could join. Throughout the discussion, we requested permission to take detailed notes and recordings, invited stakeholders to ask us questions, and solicited referrals to other relevant experts.

Post-Interview Follow-Up and Continued Engagement

Immediately after the interview, we sent a personalized thank-you email that highlighted specific insights and reaffirmed our desire for ongoing collaboration. We uploaded recordings, notes, and presentation slides to a secure drive, tagging them by stakeholder and date for easy reference by wet lab, dry lab, and hardware sub-teams. For particularly engaged stakeholders, we scheduled periodic updates to share our progress, seek further feedback, and sustain the relationship. This ongoing engagement converted isolated consultations into a continuous feedback loop that evolved alongside the project.

Integrating Stakeholder Insights

Collected feedback was systematically reviewed in weekly integration meetings, where representatives from each sub team assessed relevance and feasibility. Wet-lab leads adjusted cloning strategies based on safety concerns raised by microbiology professors, while dry-lab coders refined computational models using parameters suggested by bioinformaticians. Concurrently, hardware engineers incorporated user-experience recommendations from clinical partners to optimize phage delivery prototypes. This structured integration ensured that stakeholder wisdom directly influenced our experimental designs, modeling workflows, and instrument development.

Informing Sub-team Processes

Ultimately, our stakeholder framework bridged external expertise and internal action. By channeling stakeholder feedback into documented recommendations, we informed the wet-lab, dry-lab, and hardware sub-teams to make decisions rooted in professional stakeholder input. Whether it was redesigning an RBP assay to align with clinical needs or calibrating a hardware device based on end-user input, each sub-team leveraged the framework to validate choices as well as mitigate risks.