ABSTRACT
The biotech sector represents a broad area of scientific and technological knowledge applied to the processing of materials by biological agents through the usage of rRNA, cell fusion and novel bio-processing engineering. The science related to genomics and DNA recombination was first developed during the 1970s. It was the premise for the discovery of novel technologies in the fields of pharmacy, agriculture and industrial treatments. While, at the beginning, the relevant science was conducted within the leading public research organizations (PROs) as ‘pure science’, very soon, through a process of business creation and new university start-ups, a new market niche was created based on the commercialization of science (Feldman, 2000, 2004). The application of these discoveries to new drugs could, in principle, substitute the old pharmaceutical technological paradigm, furnishing the markets of health and agriculture with new products as alternatives to chemical compounds (Arora and Gambardella, 1994; Gambardella, 2002). Since the late 1970s, universities, venture capitalists, pharmaceutical firms and governments have supported the evolving biotechnology firms by providing critical resources and developing an institutional environment that has enabled the growth of life sciences activities within universities and dedicated science parks (Baglieri and Belussi, 2009). Since all the relevant skills are rarely found under a single roof, the participants are frequently linked through a network of interorganizational agreements. In the US and Europe the biotech sector was created around poles of scientific excellence, witnessing a movement of researchers from academic laboratories towards the private sector. Most of the biotech firms are young, science-based firms and are high R&D-intense organizations or dedicated biotechnology firms (DBFs). An interesting body of literature (Benner and Löfgren, 2007), has discussed the evolution of this ‘emerging bio-economy’ in different countries, examining the role of the state and the constitution of a specific national innovation system. Comparing the patterns of governance of the biotechnology sector in various countries, such as Finland, Sweden, the US, the UK and Australia, it has been argued that the bio-industry sector does not fit with the ‘variety of capitalism’ paradigm (Hall and Soskice, 2001), which postulates
coherence within, and systemic divergences between, national models of economic governance (for instance in relation to: labour market regulation, industrial support and ethical restrictions). On the other hand, it displays a trend towards convergence, in particular considering the high level of expenditure of public investments in health care, in financing R&D and in sponsoring university start-ups.
