Icebox
We're generating a library of the projects, technologies, and workflows that have been paused, or “put on ice,” at Arcadia.
Overview
Learning is an important part of science. If we're doing it right, not everything we attempt will work out the way we expect. And in each of those cases, there is a lesson to capture.
Iced projects often yield data and insights that could be useful to others. We're committed to wrapping up these efforts by releasing associated pubs. By clearly delineating why certain efforts get the cold shoulder, we hope others can take full advantage of our exploration.
In some cases, the reasons for pausing may be addressable in the future or by others outside of Arcadia. We sincerely hope you take up the mantle — in fact, let us know if there's anything we can do to help.

Why We Ice

For more info on the Icebox and reasons that we may ice a project, read our blog post on the topic.

Technical gap
To make an impactful advancement, we'd need further technological or conceptual development.
Project complete
We learned what we needed to learn from the project and there is no reason to continue.
Dead end
We tried to derisk a project, but could not overcome barriers that would enable us to move forward, or our hypothesis was wrong in a way that the remaining possibilities are not of interest for us to pursue.
Hard to scale
The project can't be done without massive resources, it's inefficient, or we don't have a high-throughput approach to scan enough search space and have confidence we'll be successful.
Strategic misalignment
We've decided not to pursue this area of science at the moment because it doesn't play to our unique strengths as a company.
Missing expertise
What we discovered during the project lands us in an area where we lack internal expertise, or taking the project to the next step would require expertise we don't have (yet).
Translational mismatch
The market is not appropriate, big enough, well-scoped enough, or is in an area where we are not well positioned as a company to have a competitive advantage. The time horizon to make this translationally actionable is too long or the challenges are too layered to align with translational goals.
Lacking infrastructure
We lack the facilities, equipment, or tangible resources to act on this project.

You've Been Iced!

Browse all our iced pubs and projects.

Pubs are data-focused but also contain brief explanations of why we chose not to follow up.

Projects link to a narrative page that describes the project's initial goals, progress (including associated pubs), and reasons for discontinuing.

Technical gap
Published:Mar 17, 2025
Strategic misalignment
Published:Feb 17, 2025
Translational mismatch
Published:Feb 17, 2025
Hard to scale
Technical gap
Published:Feb 17, 2025

QUESTIONS

Read our FAQ and our publishing philosophy. For technical issues, visit PubPub Help Community. If you need extra help after browsing the help sites and forums, contact arcadia-help@pubhub.org.