Report Credits Worcester's Biotech Success to 1980s ED Policies

With the emphasis many state and local tech-based economic development organizations have placed on biotechnology over the past 12-18 months, few are far enough along in implementing their strategies to point to more than a handful of successes or new construction projects. The recent explosion in public investment of resources and policies toward developing local biotech capacity is largely based on the promise of anticipated economic gains in the near or not-so-near future. 



Independent analysis of the long-term impact of specific state and local tech-based economic development policies are rare. Some programs launched in the 1980s that have commissioned outside impact studies, such as the Edison Technology Centers, the Ben Franklin Technology Partnership and Utah’s Centers of Excellence, have discovered strong returns for the public’s investment. (See the 12/20/96, 10/22/99, and 1/28/00 issues of SSTI’s Weekly Digest in our web archives for these stories.) 



Reviews of localized impacts of state tech-based economic development policy are even rarer, which makes a recent study by Eric T. Nakajima and Robert W. Smith, two graduate students in City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley, so unique. The two sought to determine if any cause and effect could be discerned between a state’s economic development policy and industrial growth. They used Worcester, Massachusetts, for their case study partly because of its isolation from metropolitan Boston and the Route 128 phenomenon. 



After several months of interviews and analysis, Nakajima and Smith concluded that today's vibrant biotechnology industry in Worcester is largely attributable to state economic development policies in place during the administration of Gov. Michael Dukakis (1983-1991). 



Several specific initiatives are identified in their report for creating the climate to nourish the community’s current biotech concentration: 

• In 1985, Gov. Dukakis designated Worcester as a Center of Excellence in Biotechnology, one of four technology-based centers established in the state. The purposes of the centers were to integrate the state universities more into their regional economies and to build and sustain growth of technology-based industrial clusters in regions with some concentration of firms and university research capacity in the chosen technology. 
• Development of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Park in Worcester as part of a Targets of Opportunity initiative to concentrate growth in existing urban centers. The state transferred at one-third of the market value the Worcester State Hospital lands for the creation of the park. State issued bonds financed construction of the first two buildings. 
• The State provided $1 million to establish the non-profit Massachusetts Biotechnology Research Institute to provide technical assistance for start-ups in the biotech park and community. MBRI is now the Massachusetts Biomedical Initiative. 
• Through the Bay State Skills Corporation, the state provided funding to support the development of biotechnology education curricula at the secondary schools, community colleges and four-year institutions.
• The Governor’s aggressive “steered recruitment” of major biotech corporations, such as a $43 million BASF facility employing 366 people, into Worcester to help create the cluster. 
• Working to ensure the leadership for development projects came from the local community by restructuring the state’s economic development activities into a single, coordinated unit that responded to local ideas and needs. For instance, the community leadership identified biotechnology as the focus of its application for Center of Excellence designation. 

The authors point out both the presence of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester and the 250 percent increase in research funding the school has received since 1989 from the National Institutes of Health is most responsible for the region’s biotech strength. They note, however, the state’s participation in creating the Biotechnology Park allowed the economic development resulting from commercialization of UMass technologies and expansion of the schools biotech research capacity. During the 1980s, the school also focused on establishing its national reputation, while community leaders, most notably the Worcester Chamber of Commerce, centered on turning the community and region into a haven for the biotech industry. 



More information, including a link to the paper, is available from the Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts: http://www.curp.neu.edu/pullspotlight073001.htm 

Editor's Note: Gov. Dukakis currently serves as vice-chairman of the SSTI Board of Trustees.