North Carolina Outlines Broad Biotech, TBED Strategy

Biotechnology has enormous potential for North Carolina's future, but the state's economic development strategy must be broader than any single industry and must include growth-from-within strategies, concludes a report published by the Institute for Emerging Issues at North Carolina State University.

The institute, a public policy initiative of NC State, is an outgrowth of the college's annual Emerging Issues Forum. Biotechnology and Humanity at the Crossroads of a New Era stems from the 2002 Forum, a panel discussion that resulted in five policy recommendations for North Carolina:

• Review all science- and technology-driven efforts to spur economic development, strengthening growth-from-within strategies;
• Increase support for science classes in grades K-12, biomanufacturing at community colleges, and investment in research universities;
• Develop new ways to boost technology transfer and commercialization;
• Implement a statewide strategy for the state's colleges and universities to contribute to regional economic development; and,
• Encourage greater public debate about biotechnology among colleges, universities and biotechnology companies.

Director of the Institute for Emerging Issues Noah Pickus, who authored the report, states that while biotechnology is not the only industry where meeting these challenges will be critical, biotech "serves as an example of why the state needs new approaches." Most of North Carolina's biotechnology companies are smaller, homegrown operations that originated with university research discoveries — a fact the report uses to suggest economic development policy should be expanded to include a greater emphasis on growth-from-within strategies.

"Similarly, the old selling points no longer sell as well," the report adds. "Neither California nor Massachusetts is noted for low costs, ease of doing business, (or) low taxes . . . yet they dominate the biotechnology industry."

The report also calls attention to the dilemma of how best to capitalize on the concentration of biotechnology in the Research Triangle while addressing the need for statewide economic growth. It emphasizes the need for regions to develop their own niches and spotlights both the technological advances at UNC-Charlotte and the multi-sector approach to treating biotechnology as a means for community development now being pioneered in western North Carolina.

A new approach for fostering high-growth entrepreneurial firms and applying new technologies to traditional industries is especially important, given North Carolina's present economic crisis, the report concludes.

Copies of Biotechnology and Humanity are available at http://www.ncsu.edu/iei.