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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. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. « Today's Pick: Canadian Q1 2007 VC Update ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn