Regional science policy and the growth of knowledge megacentres in bioscience clusters



related and agricultural and food biotechnology. There are three Max Planck Institutes
of relevance, in Biochemistry, Psychiatry and the MPI Patent Agency. GSF is the
Helmholtz Research Centre for Environment and Health, and the German Research
Institute for Food Chemistry is a Leibniz Institute. There are three Fraunhofer
Institutes, one of Germany’s four Gene Centres, two universities and two
polytechnics. The main research-oriented ‘big pharma’ companies are Roche
Diagnostics (formerly Boerhinger Mannheim) and Hoechst Marion Roussel (since
2000, Aventis). The work areas of this science community include; 3D structural
analysis, biosensors, genomics, proteomics, combinatorial chemistry, gene transfer
technologies, vaccines, bioinformatics, genetic engineering, DNA methods, primary
and cell cultures, microrganisms, proteins, enzymes and gene mapping. The Bavarian
commitment to biotechnology (and other new technologies) was realised through its
state government decision to privatise its share in power-generation and distribution
companies in the 1990s, thereby creating a funding pool to subsidise applied
technology developments. Nevertheless, the numbers of start-ups are not
overwhelming, perhaps because of the quest for ‘quality’ start-ups in whom
substantial sums may be individually invested.

A further explanation for conservatism is that BioM AG, the ‘midwife’ agency to the
cluster, funded partly by BioRegio and set up as a corporation, makes investments
with its shareholders’ (state, industry and banks) money. Banks seeking to earn high
returns hold most of the shares. They also use this method to learn about
biotechnology, its risks and prospects. Thus, an already well-subsidised system is
further protected from risk by the influence of banking culture, itself highly
conservative in Germany, to ensure, as far as possible, risk avoidance. Hence, while
BioM is the network face of the biotechnology cluster in Munich, its activities are
ultimately orchestrated indirectly and directly by the banks, abetted by a fairly risk-
averse, mostly publicly-funded, venture capital industry and the local pharmaceutical
and chemical companies (Giesecke, 2000).

So, for the moment Europe’s best candidates (to which may possibly be added
Stockholm-Uppsala in Sweden, VINNOVA, 2001) are either somewhat lacking in the
maturity or critical mass of their DBFs, as is the case to varying degrees of both
Cambridge and Munich. This is an
exploitation rather than exploration knowledge

27



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