University–Industry Interactions: the Case of the UK Biotech Industry

Abstract

This paper's focus is on both the geography of entrepreneurship and on industry‐collaborative links internationally, nationally and at the local level in the UK biotech industry, the world's second largest biotech industry. The paper reports on a pilot survey of the UK biotech industry. The survey has two goals: to understand the business goals of the firms and to examine the relative importance of local conditions to the business of biotech. Further evidence on these two themes comes from two studies of Oxfordshire, one of the UK's centres of biomedical science and biotechnology. The first is a survey of the county's biotech firms. The second, of academic spin‐offs, demonstrates how the business of biotech in the UK is intimately tied to the national innovation system, which in turn is dependent upon highly localised elite science which in turn signals to world elites that the region is a hot‐spot for innovation.

Keywords:

• Biotechnology
• universities
• business strategies
• UK
• public policy
• Oxfordshire

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Ka Wai Ho and Saverio Romeo for data collection on the spin‐offs project and to two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

1. www.britishcouncil.org/gost/csr.htm

2. www.DTI.gov.uk

3. The Medical Research Council (MRC) Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Biotechnology and Biological sciences Research Council (BBRC), BBRC £200 million per year to scientists working in universities and eight sponsored research institutes, funds 7000 scientists, postgrad students and support staff. This includes Roslin in Scotland, Babraham (Cambridge).

4. Calculated on the basis of US population 296,000,000, UK population of 60,000 and an exchange rate of £1 =  $1.75.

5. /www.vfa.de/en/articles/art_2003‐01_004.html

6. Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm. Universities were by several indicators of academic or research performance, including alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, articles published in Nature and Science, articles in Science Citation Index‐expanded and Social Science Citation Index, and academic performance with respect to the size of an institution.

7. Oxford won a competition sponsored by US venture capital firm Cross Atlantic Capital Partners, beating off competition from Imperial College London, and Cambridge www.xacp.com/news_detail.asp?news_id = 82

8. Using a more restricted definition, OEO (2003) identifies 73 firms.