ABSTRACT
Thus far the theoretical framework explaining the exaggerated knowledge asymmetries associated with knowledge economy development processes has worked extremely well. It has shown that not only is biotechnology highly skewed in its distribution between countries, but that this applies to bioregions within countries. Not even the US, where the first modern biotechnology commercialisation was achieved, has an even regional spread of the activity. Moreover, we see specific bioregions predominating in particular knowledge domains — Boston-Cambridge globally strong in genomics, Silicon Valley strong in bioinformatics, for example. Moreover, as we shall see in Chapter 9, agro-food biotechnology has its own socio-spatial logic, St Louis, Missouri being the world's largest agro-food biotechnology cluster, not least because of its agro-food research institutions and the influence exerted there by genetically modified organism (GMO) specialist, Monsanto. Despite this typical combination of high-grade public research facilities and commercial organisations for localised knowledge exploitation, which as we have seen, characterises such knowledge-based clusters, most national and many regional governments nevertheless aspire to develop a biotechnology industry or at least cluster. Simultaneously, Ministers of Science and high functionaries in multilateral agencies such as the EU and OECD downplay the chances of this happening, arguing it is a waste of scarce resources to try to build a successful biotechnology cluster. Why this contradiction?
