Biotechnology clusters as regional, sectoral innovation systems

Today, knowledge economies are a key asset for global competitiveness. Biotechnology is a knowledge-driven sector because it consists of knowledge working on knowledge to create value, decoding in genomics and proteomics being paradigmatic knowledge-based economic activity. Like many other new economy industries such as information and communications technology, new media, and advanced finance,firms cluster in proximity to knowledge sources. In the case of biotechnology universities are key magnets. But to transfer science from the laboratory bench to the market involves complex, interactive chains of transactions among scientists, entrepreneurs, and various intermediaries. Chief among the latter are investors and lawyers. Proximity to such services and, in biotechnology, research hospitals for clinical trials creates an innovation system. This is best analyzed regionally and locally. This article anatomizes the functioning of regional sectoral innovation systems in Germany, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Cambridge, U.K.