I'm now back in the office after a frenzied four days in Boston last week
for BIO - and my impressions and conclusions are finally starting to take
hold. The foremost in my mind is that Boston - and the entire state of
Massachusetts - is a life sciences hothouse.
Two facts drove this home:

First, the Mass Pavilion on the BIO conference floor was the size of a small
Wal-Mart. The largest space occupied by a single jurisdiction: by my
estimates, the pavilion was home to over 60 companies, research centres,
universities and hospitals. Even navigating the cluster of booths required
the kind of 3D vertical map guide usually found in shopping malls - an
impressive outlay for a state whose population (6.4 million in 2006) is just
over half Ontario's.
Second, the state and its leaders are determined to remain at the forefront
of global biotechnology. This conclusion was driven home by Governor Deval
Patrick's ambitious new 10-year, US $1 billion sector development strategy.
Patrick's plan is impressive. It emphasizes a new Massachusetts Stem Cell
Bank, top-up funding to address a drop in NIH expenditures, research
fellowship grants to retain top scientists, and a series of MaRS-like "life
science innovation centres." But the Massachusetts innovation ethos extends
deep into the private sector as well.
Merck convened a panel discussion the second night of BIO on the secret of
the state's success, and some of the factors cited have deep implications
for Toronto and for MaRS:
Don't neglect the underlying elements of your innovation ecosystem.
Universities and hospitals are critically important foundations of commerce;
let them decay at your peril. After all, there are profound advantages that
come from being a state where "the world sends its children to be educated."
Communities attract companies - not the other way around. In the biotech
industry in particular, firms like to be as close to each other as possible.
Not only that, they value proximity to what one speaker called "the 3 Bs:
beer, books and bistros." Biotech is an industry that thrives on young
talent - and young people want to live in intimate, village-like communities
infused with an university spirit and brimming with intellectual curiosity.
It's never too late to create a world-class biotech sector. Indeed, the
state's global success is a relatively recent phenomenon. In fact, according
to Ranch Kimball (now head of the Joslin Diabetes Center and former
secretary of economic development for then-Gov. Mitt Romney) the industry
was a wreck as recently as three years ago. The state was only keeping one
out of every four jobs generated by Mass.-based companies, and not a single
pharmaceutical company was in the state's investment attraction pipeline.
What led the industry's resurgence? From the public sector, an integrated
sales force and business resource team, 24-hour acknowledgment of every
information request from investment prospects, and expedited 180-day
permitting for industrial and commercial developments.
One of the key talking points heard throughout the Ontario Pavilion at BIO
is that the province is home to North America's third largest biotech
sector. Closing in on number one, however, will be an uphill climb - unless
the province can learn some of the key lessons articulated by the group
gathered at Merck last week.
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