Organizational and Institutional Genesis and Change: The Emergence of High-Tech Clusters in the Life Sciences

Although many might think of biotech’s development in the Bay Area as a Silicon Valley story, the early location for firms was in South San Francisco and in Emeryville in the East Bay, not in the heart of the information and computer technology world in Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. [...] In the previous chapter, our analysis of the links between science and the economy examined the ramifying effects of scientific and technological change, which lead to the creation of new roles and identities, novel organizational practices, and new models of a science-based firm. [...] The challenge, then, is to understand the relationship between the scale of activity, the diversity of organizational forms, and the nature and timing of the networks and activities that linked the participants within specific geographic locales and constitute the contours of the field. [...] To gain purchase on the pattern of geographic agglomeration, we examine the organizational populations in the early years of the industry in the eleven areas where the earliest firms appeared: Boston, the New York Metropolitan Area, Northern New Jersey, the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area, Washington, D. [...] In the three regions on the left side, the anchor tenant catalyzed activity and passed the baton (reflected by the arrows) to other types of organizations: in the Bay Area to DBFs, in Boston to VCs, and in San Diego to DBFs.