Growing an Innovation Cluster Part 2. As the European Commission prepares to release its first comprehensive policy on nurturing innovation clusters, Science|Business begins a series looking at where the most successful clusters get their edge.
The report includes the results of a survey of 147 individuals that are involved in the cluster showing:
With federal research funding falling behind the rate of inflation in recent years, 44 per cent of respondents said a lack of funding for collaborative efforts was the factor that had the biggest negative impact on cooperation between institutions.
Only 27 per cent of respondents rated Massachusetts’ venture capital firms as strong in their “willingness to fund radically new ideas”.
Just 28 per cent of respondents from life sciences companies said their own organisation is “effective” at spinning off or commercialising new ideas that do not fit its core mission or business lines.
Growing an Innovation Cluster Part 1
Cambridge/Boston life sciences cluster receives $1B boost
In addition, high housing costs and earlier legislation that let California take a lead in stem cell research caused an outflow in talent from Massachusetts. Companies are being courted to locate factories and other businesses in less expensive, more tax friendly states. Some three dozen US states plus Asian countries like Singapore and China and the European Union are pushing clusters.
Gerry McDougall of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Boston office says it is difficult to quantify the “human capital” that has left the area, but noted researchers also did stay.
In June the state Governor Deval Patrick signed off on the $1 billion Life Sciences Initiative aimed at securing the state’s position as a global leader in life sciences. “The $1 billion inflow from Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick will help stem the bleeding,” McDougall said. “The stimulus package is incredibly important to the academic non profit community, which is the pump [for the industry] long term.”
The survey respondents see Massachusetts researchers excelling in several of the most promising areas in the life sciences during the coming decade. More than a quarter (27 per cent) cited convergent technologies, such as drug-device combinations, as being the area in which Massachusetts is most likely to excel, followed by biologic products (21 per cent) and personalised medicine (19 per cent).
Other highlights of the Super Cluster survey showed:
While nearly three in five respondents (58 per cent) are based in the Boston/Cambridge area, notable concentrations of life sciences researchers and companies are emerging in the Lowell, Lexington-Waltham and Framingham-Marlborough areas to the north and west of the city.
Seven in 10 respondents (71 per cent) said it was important for them to be in the Massachusetts Super Cluster, in close proximity to other life sciences firms.
More than half (51 per cent) said that the ability to just “run into” people has resulted in a business opportunity or research collaboration.
“Talent attracts talent, and success breeds success,” said Wendy Everett, president of the New England Health Care Institute, when the study was released. "This clustering brings enormous benefits to the organisations and communities involved, such as ease of collaboration. That is why it is so important to maintain the momentum that the Massachusetts Super Cluster has made possible."
When asked what would cause them to consider leaving Massachusetts, fewer than eight percent cited the commute to work. One-quarter of respondents cited “pay” and four in 10 said “lifestyle”. Each of these factors has been raised as a concern by employers attempting to recruit and retain workers in Massachusetts.
Despite their concerns about the life sciences industry, the survey respondents looked to the future optimistically:
More than half (55.1 per cent) said that job opportunities in the Massachusetts Super Cluster would strengthen during the next decade, 35.9 per cent said they would stay the same and 9 per cent thought that the life sciences job market would weaken.
Seven in 10 (69.6 per cent) were confident that, if they lost their job today, they could find an opportunity in Massachusetts at an equivalent or higher level.
Two-thirds of respondents (66.2 per cent) consider themselves to be entrepreneurs, and 68.8 per cent expect their next position to be in a start-up company.
Widening partnerships
A report released in February 2008 by Mass Insight Corp. and McKinsey & Co. , which was prepared in concert with more than a dozen industry and academic groups including the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council (MBC), wasn’t quite as cheery.
It indicated that Massachusetts no longer has a monopoly as a life science cluster and is facing increased global competition, a shortage of trained workers and a lack of coordination among key state agencies and groups involved in the field.
Trained workers are a concern because only 5.4 per cent of bachelor’s degrees awarded by the state-funded University of Massachusetts system were related to life sciences in 2005, compared with 17 per cent for the University of California system.
In addition, the report said Massachusetts faces growing competition from other global clusters with lower costs, better collaboration and a more active talent pipeline. The report noted that China, while currently far behind Massachusetts in the quality and quantity of research and commercial applications, will generate 11,000 life sciences PhDs in 2015 compared to 400 produced by Massachusetts annually.
One of the recommendations the report made is for Massachusetts to create connections with global clusters.
McDougall of PricewaterhouseCoopers couldn’t agree more. “We have the human capital and entrepreneurial spirit in the US and Boston, which gives us an advantage,” he said. “But it is an international scientific community, and Boston will need to grapple with that in the future, with how to compete and partner in the future.”
One example in that direction he pointed to is a partnership between Luxembourg and three US institutions in which PricewaterhouseCoopers was involved. It’s a model he sees as important going forward. In early June, three prominent US biomedical science organisations entered into an international collaboration with the government of Luxembourg (see Luxembourg looks to US to build up its biomedical research, 12 June, Science Business) to establish a bioscience centre of excellence. The aim is to quicken innovation by focusing on cutting-edge research in molecular biology, systems biology and personalised medicine.
The initiative will include formation of a centralised biobank/tissue repository, two major projects to further research in molecular biology, the cornerstone of personalised medicine, and a project to demonstrate the effectiveness of new diagnostics tests for earlier detection and treatment of lung cancer.
The US organisations involved in the collaboration are The Partnership for Personalized Medicine (PPM) led by Leland H. Hartwell, also president of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington; The Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), also in Seattle, led by Leroy Hood; and Arizona’s Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), led by Jeffrey Trent, president and scientific director of TGen and former scientific director at the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health.
The announcement was made jointly by three branches of Luxembourg’s government, the Ministry of the Economy and Foreign Trade, the Ministry for Culture, Higher Education and Research and the Ministry of Health. The Luxembourg government is investing $200 million in the initiative, with the hope that ultimately it will improve the health of its own people using personalised medicine, which involves administering the correct drug to the correct patient at the right time and in the right dose.
Public–private model
The public–private initiative is expected to serve as a model for other international collaborations among partners looking to share research and development costs and gain access to each other’s information, networks and markets.
In late June another group of Massachusetts life sciences entities focused on clinical research said they would forge ties with similar groups around the world, starting with the health ministry of the Lombardia region of Italy. The four Massachusetts entities comprising the new Clinical Research Consortium of Massachusetts are Tufts Medical Center’s Institute for Clinical Research & Health Policy Studies, clinical trials and drug safety software company Phase Forward Inc., clinical trials enrollment management company BBK Worldwide and consulting company Court Square Group. The grouping is forming overseas alliances at the same time similar groups in California and North Carolina are doing so.
McDougall of PricewaterhouseCoopers sees such alliances as the wave of the future for Massachusetts and other clusters. “It will need to continue in a more scaled way than what we’ve seen in the past,” he said of Massachusetts reaching out globally to seek partners.
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