CROWDSOURCING SUPPLEMENT DEVELOPMENT
Marko Mäkinen
Marko Mäkinen is the managing director of Rohtos Labs Ltd., a Finnish manufacturer of nutritional supplements designed for personal optimization. Mr. Mäkinen is a nutrition and self-optimization enthusiast.
Marko Mäkinen from Rotoslabs explores a novel crowdsourcing model for developing
We design our products to enhance the everyday human experience.
Summary
- Rotos Labs is a Finnish company that designs and manufactures dietary supplements to enhance the everyday human experience. - The company currently offers a trio of products through its website and has additional products in the development pipeline. - A crowdsourcing model is being utilized to involve the community in the development process of a new dietary supplement. - A pilot program for the crowdsourced product development initiative is scheduled to take place in the spring of 2018. - Community members can participate or learn more by visiting crowdsource.rotos.com and providing an email address for future contact.
Article
Crowdsourcing The Capsule: How A Finnish Supplement Maker Sought To Hand Product Development To Its Community
At Biohacker Summit 2017 Helsinki, Marko Mäkinen Presented A Modest But Strikingly Modern Vision For Wellness Innovation
In a conference landscape often crowded with lofty promises and polished pitches, Marko Mäkinen’s presentation at **Biohacker Summit 2017 Helsinki** took a different route. Speaking on **Friday, 13 October 2017**, in **Helsinki, Finland**, the managing director of **Rohtos Labs Ltd.**, presented a concise argument for a more democratic future in nutritional supplements: let the community help build them.
His talk, **“Crowdsourcing Supplement Development,”** was less a sales exercise than an invitation. Mäkinen, a nutrition and self-optimization enthusiast leading the Finnish supplement manufacturer, described a company with products already on the market, but with its eyes fixed on a more participatory model of innovation.
A Company Selling Supplements, But Pitching Participation
Introducing himself simply, Mäkinen explained that Rohtos Labs was a Finnish company designing and manufacturing dietary supplements intended to enhance everyday human experience. The firm already offered a trio of products through its website, he said, and more were in development.
Yet the real point of the session was not to promote the current line-up. It was to outline a shift in process.
“We are utilizing a crowdsourcing model to develop a supplement product,” Mäkinen said, framing the initiative as an effort to open up what has traditionally been a closed cycle of formulation, testing and launch.
In an industry where product development is often guarded behind laboratory doors and marketing departments, the proposition carried a certain disruptive clarity. Rather than merely selling wellness to consumers, the company wanted consumers to shape it.
A Pilot Program Built Around Collective Input
The centrepiece of the presentation was a pilot programme scheduled for **spring 2018**. Mäkinen said the company was preparing to run a test in which the wider community would participate in the development of one of its upcoming supplements.
The concept was straightforward but ambitious. Through a dedicated online portal, interested participants could register their interest and potentially contribute to the design and manufacture of a future product. The site, **crowdsource.rotos.com**, was positioned as the gateway to that process.
This was not presented as crowdsourcing in the loose, marketing-heavy sense that has often diluted the term. Instead, it suggested a structured attempt to draw collective insight into product innovation, an experiment in whether community enthusiasm could be translated into something practical, commercial and scientifically grounded.
A Quiet Challenge To Traditional Development
What made the proposal notable at the summit was not just the idea of public involvement, but the implicit critique behind it. Conventional supplement development has long relied on top-down decision-making: experts formulate, companies package, consumers purchase. Mäkinen’s model hinted at a reversal, or at least a rebalancing.
By inviting people to help influence what was made, Rohtos Labs appeared to be testing whether wellness products could emerge from dialogue rather than prescription. The approach aligned neatly with the ethos of the biohacking movement itself, which has often prized experimentation, self-knowledge and bottom-up discovery over institutional authority.
There was also a practical logic to it. Communities built around health optimization are not passive audiences. They are highly engaged, vocal and often deeply informed about ingredients, outcomes and performance. Harnessing that attention as a development tool, rather than treating it solely as a customer base, may have been the company’s most compelling insight.
Beyond Product Hype, Toward Shared Ownership
Mäkinen made a point of noting that the session was not meant to “hype” the company’s existing products. That restraint gave the presentation an unusual credibility. In place of grandiose promises, he offered a call for involvement.
“If you are interested in participating or learning more, please visit crowdsource.rotos.com and we will be in touch,” he said.
It was a small closing line, but it captured the spirit of the talk. The future being proposed was not one in which innovation descended from brand headquarters fully formed. It was one in which a company asked its community to step closer, offer its thinking and become part of the making.
A Glimpse Of Where Wellness Might Be Heading
In the end, “Crowdsourcing Supplement Development” was a short presentation with wider implications. At **Biohacker Summit 2017 Helsinki**, Marko Mäkinen outlined a model that sought to modernize supplement development through openness, pilot testing and collaborative design.
Whether the spring 2018 experiment would fully reshape the process remained to be seen. But the premise itself felt timely: in a culture increasingly skeptical of opaque systems and eager for participation, even the supplement capsule could become a site of shared authorship.
For Rohtos Labs, the wager was clear. Innovation, Mäkinen suggested, might not only come from what a company makes, but from who it invites into the room.
Part of Biohacker Summit 2017 Helsinki