For the work developed at BIOLAC and that promoted elsewhere by the Programme, Biotechnology can be defined as the field of applied knowledge that arises from the intersection between basic biological sciences and technical and technological innovations to use organisms, their parts, or their native processes to create something new that fulfill the previously perceived need that stimulated its creation. Biotechnology can give rise to a tool that, employed later, can be used to produce a good or service, or it can directly be one of the latter two.
Generally, modern Biotechnology also requires applying scientific knowledge to understand why the processes and organisms it creates work the way they do. Almost always, Biotechnology opens doors to improve itself or create a novelty capable and prone to originate additional ones.
Therefore, biotechnology requires living organisms, their parts, and processes, together with the intention and knowledge of factual evidence that gives the entire process a truly human nature, to give reality a novelty that could not occur or arise without human intervention.