Battle of the Biotech (Super)Clusters

Nature Biotechnology has a great article about this week's announcement of Massachusetts' new economic development initiative - the Supercluster. "From the floor of the Biotechnology Industry Organization's (BIO) annual meeting in Boston, Governor Deval Patrick and Mayor Thomas Menino announced that Massachusetts's Supercluster will be getting a $1 billion secret weapon to fight those clandestinely working to undermine the state's lead in biotech."

Fight whom? Not terrorists, but the next worst thing: the Californian Institute for Regenerative Medicine which according to Nature "threatens to suck companies, people and jobs out of
the Boston metropolis' heart and allow California to usurp the
Massachusetts area's crown as the number-one biotech cluster."


Supercluster is a $1 billion package of public money to bring together "world-class science, talent, mentors and funding, quality of life, laboratory and office space, inter- and intra-institute collaboration, established biotech firms and support services, access to patients and markets, and last but by no means least, tax incentives."

There's an awful lot at stake for Beantown. According to the Boston Globe (which has not-as-good, but free coverage of the announcement), while only 1 in 50 Americans lives in Massachusetts, fully 1 in 7 biotech jobs does.

The state does seem to have a lot of interesting ideas for investing in biotech:

• The Massachusetts
  BioManufacturing Center in Lowell, which has incubated 20 companies take research to the manufacturing stage.
• a Life Sciences Investment Fund
• A Massachusetts Medical Device Development Center that helps entrepreneus navigate the new venture capital enviroment - where investors shy away from products in early stages of development, leaving medical patents rotting on the shelves.
  

This topic is particularly heavy on my mind right now, as I am preparing to go to Barcelona in early July to give a talk on "the geography of creativity" at the annual meeting of the International Association of Science Parks.

Comments

[David Scott Lewis]

Yawn. Boston is my favorite city in the States, but has lost its mojo.

California will win this battle, regardless how much money other regions throw at it. However, second place may not be such a bad position -- and at least puts the area ahead of Research Triangle, the Beltway, New Jersey, Minneapolis, ...

For the highest-end research, I'd expect leadership along 128. But when it comes to sheer numbers, I'd expect to see a lot higher numbers along the 101, 280, 680, 880 and 580.