Are biotechnology and its clusters in crisis?

Abstract

This paper asks whether biotechnology, in general, and the industry clusters of innovative biotechnology enterprises that have uniformly characterised its economic form, are now in a terminal crisis. Or are the difficulties that are clearly evident and described below surmountable and showing signs of being surmounted? The question of a crisis in biotechnology is important because so much faith has been placed in the technology over the past generation during which it has made great technical strides forward in medicine and other user communities (agro-food, energy, environment, security) and contributed significantly to healthcare and welfare gains while high hopes have long and justifiably been associated with its vibrant industry clusters. The paper postulates a crisis based on two key features of biotechnology. The first of these is an economic crisis in which enormous sums are required to research, develop and innovate new products, especially medical drugs. The second is epistemological and confronts the (reductionist) central dogma of biotechnology with the evolutionary implications of emergent systems biology.

Keywords:

• biotechnology
• clusters
• systems biology
• crisis
• emergence
• modularity