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Creating Successful Biotech Clusters
Steven Casper Why have San Diego and San Francisco been more successful than Los Angeles in creating a cluster of new biotech companies and attracting large pharmaceutical firms? Professor Casper is attempting to understand the many factors that may contribute to or impede the growth of clusters of biotech enterprises and to use that knowledge to design appropriate policies that may stimulate the development of new biotech firms. The analysis has a particular focus on the key skills needed to fuel the growth of this industry and the way in which the labor market for this talent functions. Professor Casper is especially interested in the problem of understanding why some clusters develop markedly higher innovative capacity than others - both the Los Angeles (LA) and San Diego (SD) clusters, for example, are successful in terms of employment and company creation, but the San Diego cluster appears to have a markedly higher performance in fostering radically innovative start-ups in new technologies. The goal of the research is to create a systematic comparison of cluster formation across California. Professor Casper's work builds upon a large dataset of company information and career histories of several thousand managers and scientists employed over the history of the California biotechnology cluster
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