I live and work in Louisville, KY, a city that probably isn’t too different from a lot of communities in the U.S. that are not biotech hubs like San Francisco and Boston. Driven in part by economic development, many in my hometown would like to develop a biotech cluster. But building a biotech cluster is hard and takes time.
We have been hard at work on building a biotech cluster for some time. In 1997, Louisville community leaders produced a report that included developing an economic development niche “biomedical research and healthcare-related services.” The Research Challenge Trust Fund, or Bucks for Brains, started the following year. Bucks for Brains has enabled the University of Louisville to recruit and retain teams of research faculty from some of the best universities in the world. Carl Weissman, the CEO of Seattle-based Accelerator, frequently advises communities to recruit star scientists if they want to create biotech hubs, and Louisville has done it. In August 2011, The Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article on the top 100 universities in biggest gains in federal funding for R&D in sciences and engineering for the period 1999-2009. The University of Louisville ranked fourth on that list with an increase of 263.1 percent over the decade.
To read the full, original article click on this link: How To Build a Biotech Cluster That Isn’t Boston or SF | Xconomy
