The Next Big Thing:
Porter Leads Life-Sciences Summit
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| Porter: the Boston/Massachusetts cluster as the world leader in biotech and biomedicine. Photo by Justin Ide / Harvard News Office |
In a keynote presentation at a September “Massachusetts Life Sciences Summit,” HBS professor Michael E. Porter declared the Commonwealth the life-sciences center of the world, by virtue of its unsurpassed “cluster” of world-renowned universities and teaching hospitals; medical-device, biotech, and pharmaceutical companies; financial firms; and skilled workers.
“The leadership position is ours to lose, but we need to change the paradigm of how we operate in the Commonwealth,” Porter told some eighty CEOs and leaders of biotech, health-care, government, and academic entities gathered at HBS. He argued that Massachusetts needs a coherent strategy based on a common understanding of the challenges the life-sciences industry faces and a cooperative approach to meeting them. This could produce as many as 100,000 high-paying jobs in biotech companies alone, Porter said.
Harvard’s Bishop William Lawrence University Professor and an internationally recognized expert on strategy and competitiveness, Porter, through his research, has brought prominence to the role of dynamic clusters as a key to regional and national economic success. He defines clusters as geographic concentrations of interconnected companies and institutions in a particular field. At the summit, Porter noted that many countries and more than forty U.S. states are making concerted efforts to establish life-sciences clusters.
HBS Dean Kim B. Clark opened the summit and introduced Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers, who declared that the University must do its part to ensure that scientific advances deliver the maximum benefit to society. Accordingly, while remaining committed to principles of academic openness and ethical research, Harvard has decided to review its policies regarding intellectual property and technology transfer, as well as its traditionally cautious approach toward collaborations with industry. The University “must be prepared to work cooperatively with the private sector,” Summers said, observing that “conflict of interest is one side of the coin, and synergy the other.”
Summers was followed by MIT President Charles M. Vest and former HBS faculty member Eric S. Lander, director of the Broad Institute, a $300 million research center recently established in Cambridge to advance genetics-based medicine. Summers, Vest, and Lander all remarked on the promise the genomic revolution holds for society, the need to facilitate its emergence and commercialize its discoveries, and the importance of collaborative efforts to achieve these ends. Massachusetts Governor W. Mitt Romney (MBA ’74, JD ’75) has also endorsed these goals.
In a wide-ranging panel discussion, alongside Massachusetts’s strengths, it was noted that problems exist with the site-regulation process, the high cost of living generally and housing in particular, limited in-state manufacturing, and shortcomings in the technology-transfer and clinical-trials processes.
To enhance competitiveness, panelists and participants suggested facilitating exchanges of technology-development knowledge, using IT to cut health-care costs, upgrading training opportunities for workers at the worksite, expanding clinical trials, and capturing more downstream manufacturing.
The summit concluded with a commitment to create a coordinating organization of leaders from the different sectors of the Boston/Massachusetts cluster and develop concrete agendas in each priority area. HBS will continue its active role in the life-sciences effort, which, Porter noted, marks a new chapter in business, government, and university collaboration in Massachusetts. The life-sciences summit, he added, is an example of the kind of contribution the School and its faculty increasingly can make to this effort.
For more information, visit www.isc.hbs.edu/life_sciences_summit.htm.
