Building Robust Business Clusters: Lessons from Biotech
Why do high-tech clusters form in some regions but not others, even when the communities have comparable resources ? To answer this question, most studies of high-tech clusters focus on well-known successful examples and work backwards to trace a narrative, highlighting the role of specific entrepreneurs or groups. I take an alternative route, examining both failures and successes, and start with the formation of a new field, the emergence of the biotechnology industry in the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
We examine eleven regions in the US that were rich with resources such as scientific knowledge, money and business skills. Each community had the potential prerequisites needed to form biotech clusters, yet only three formed robust communities while the other eight did not.
The successful regions were marked by the presence of a diversity of types of organisations; a local ‘anchor tenant’ that protected the value of openness; and a dense web of local relationships. Such conditions made cross-network transposition possible, whereby experience, status and legitimacy in one network was converted into ‘fresh’ action in another. The analysis of successful and under-developed clusters transcends the nuances of history and local detail to specify the processes that foster catalytic growth.
The lessons drawn from the formation of robust biotech clusters in the US are transferrable to other industrial sectors as well as other countries, including Ireland.
The broader implications focus on the sequence of network formation, the necessity of organisational diversity and the importance of catalytic organisations that provide the relational glue, which holds a cluster together and makes possible the transfer of best practices.
Building_Robust_Business_Clusters_Lessons_from_Biotech(WPowell) (1,177 kbs)