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Innovation capacity in the healthcare sector and historical anchors: examples from the UK, Switzerland and the US

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Abstract

Innovation is an integral part of economic development in developed economies. In the post 2008 period, a key policy agenda is that of sustainable development, which calls for innovation in all aspects of value-chains. In this paper, we focus on innovation from the biotech—pharma perspective to see whether or not this will lead to a sustainable future for the regions where there are clusters of firms in this sector. We examine data from a recently completed European Union study of innovation in the Healthcare sector from the UK and Switzerland, countries with an historical base in pharma, to understand how innovation pathways vary at the regional level in the broader life sciences, which incorporate biotech and more. Innovation in the healthcare sector in two regions, Oxfordshire in the UK and Zurich in Switzerland are compared. We contextualize our discussion by drawing on studies that focus on the sector in the US, specifically Boston. The analytical framework comprises three elements: innovation systems and national and regional economic development theories are the first two, followed by approaches which consider organizational or institutional activity. This framework is used to help explain and understand the complexity of how innovation is organized at the sub-national level. The overall context is that it is increasing becoming a condition for government financing of research that it has more immediate application in industry or have the possibility of commercialisation (e.g., translational research).

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Notes

  1. http://vrr.healthties.eu/. Accessed 26 January 2015.

  2. http://www.massbio.org/. Accessed 22 February 2015.

  3. http://www.swissbiotech.org/Php5/aa2/UserFiles/File/pdf/swissbiotechreport/SBR_2014.pdf. Accessed 26 November 2014.

  4. http://www.scoopproject.org.uk/1frida-anchor-firms-contribute-to-regional-development.aspx. Accessed 29 December 2014.

  5. Data are available at http://vrr.healthties.eu/. Accessed 3 June 2013.

  6. http://www.bioindustry.org/home/. Accessed 26 November 2014.

  7. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-for-life-sciences. Accessed 7 June 2014.

  8. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/427769/BIS-15-224-BIS-strength-opp-2014.pdf. Accessed 14 July 2015.

  9. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/9966414/Cambridge-home-of-Britains-biotech-boom-offers-relief-to-UK-economic-ills.html. Accessed 26 January 2015.

  10. http://www.obn.org.uk/. Accessed 21 January 2015.

  11. http://www.en.scienceindustries.ch/_file/9257/branchenportrait-e.pdf. Accessed 26 January 2015.

  12. http://www.interpharma.ch/sites/default/files/polynomics-2011_bedeutung-der-pharmaindustrie-fuer-die-schweiz_e.pdf. Accessed 26 January 2015.

  13. http://www.roche.ch/en/standorte/schlieren.htm. Accessed 26 January 2015.

  14. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2014-15/subject-ranking/subject/life-sciences. Accessed 22 February 2015.

  15. http://www.ref.ac.uk/. Accessed 28 July 2015.

  16. http://www.abpi.org.uk/industry-info/knowledge-hub/global-industry/Pages/industry-market-.aspx. Accessed 26 February 2015.

  17. http://www.massbio.org/economic_development/the_massachusetts_supercluster. Accessed 21 January 2015.

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Acknowledgments

We thank John Slater for his comments on an earlier version of this paper. Laurel Edmunds is supported by the NIHR Oxford BRC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK

    Helen Lawton Smith

  2. Department of Geography, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen

  3. Radcliffe Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Laurel Edmunds

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  1. Helen Lawton Smith
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Correspondence to Helen Lawton Smith.

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Lawton Smith, H., Bagchi-Sen, S. & Edmunds, L. Innovation capacity in the healthcare sector and historical anchors: examples from the UK, Switzerland and the US. J Technol Transf 41, 1420–1439 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-015-9442-7

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