Laboratories and Genentech are present, most are SMEs, 49% without products on the
market, 45% with no revenue in 2000. Finally, of the pharmaceutical pipeline
products reported, 53% are in preclinical trials. This is by no means unusual, but
nevertheless testifies to the apparent fragility of the exploitation aspect of the
Northern California cluster, once its strength, but never adequately backed up with
strong bioscience exploration capabilities and now, belatedly perhaps, seeking to
embed them.
In Southern California, the San Diego biotechnology cluster has larger claims to be
considered a biosciences megacentre than even that in the North. In Porter’s (2002)
competitiveness study San Diego’s biopharmaceuticals cluster is presented as long
established and among the most significant outside Boston, especially for R&D.
Cluster employment growth was more than 8,000 from 1988-1997 and San Diego had
the most rapid growth in patent output compared to the twenty largest US
biotechnology clusters. There are some 400 SMEs, focusing mainly on one or two
preferred drug targets, the University of California, San Diego, with numerous
specialist research centres, and finally, some globally known research institutes, the
Salk Institute, the Scripps Research Institute, the Burnham Institute, and the La Jolla
Institute for Allergies and Immunology, each focusing upon aspects of life science,
medical or clinical research. The Scripps Institute, since establishment in the 1950s
required its researchers to raise their own funds encouraging collaborative innovation
with larger firms (like Dow). By contrast, the Salk Institute does not conduct
corporate research but licenses its discoveries and takes equity stakes in companies.
UCSD emphasised medical research and academic entrepreneurship. One early fruit
of that approach was Hybritech, a 1978 biotechnology start-up, from which more than
fifty other local biotechnology DBFs were spun out. In 1986 it was sold to Eli Lilly
for $400 million. A further feature of this cluster is its strong and long-established
networking propensity, signified by the establishment since 1985 of the UCSD
CONNECT network, a model for cluster integration in many other new economy
clusters such as Scotland’s and Cambridge’s (UK) (ICT) networking associations.
In Fig. 2 an analysis is provided of the origins of the San Diego biotechnology cluster
firms in relation to the San Diego CONNECT network. It is notable that
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