Of course I’m talking about the biotech economic engines in the Bay Area and Boston respectively. These regions have seen a powerful synergy develop between research universities and the various components of the biotech business ranging from genomics to informatics. In each of these areas, the tech industry has also played a key role in economic development.
Other regions have attempted to create similar sandboxes (Silicon Shire in the UK and La Jolla come to mind) and have seen some real success, however the original two regions remain the most salient.
What is interesting about the National Capitol Region in this respect is the following: a unique combination of federal (NIH and NSF), private (Howard Hughes’ Janelia Farm, Inova Health Systems, Howard University, Medstar) and large public Carnegie Research I educational institutions (Mason and University of Maryland College Park) intersecting with a burgeoning tech sector that is increasingly interested in biotech.
I believe that any attempt to blindly emulate Silicon Valley or the Route 128 corridor would have great difficulty succeeding–anywhere. However, I do think the notion of building an economic engine based on an intersection of biosciences (writ very large) and tech, nourished by federal and private R&D expenditures could be exactly what is needed to create a new version of these extraordinary economic success stories.
Jim
Discoverers and Discoveries 