Possible road maps for workforce development in biocommerce clusters, including institutions of higher education: Results of legislative hearings on the current and future workforce needs of California's biotechnology industry

The article that follows is the eleventh in a series of articles on the nature of biotechnology and its related industries with regard to educational and training needs and trends. The series is designed both to facilitate the understanding of the industry by the academic educational and research training sector, as well as to better define the consequent educational, discovery and applied research, and developmental research training needs of future employees. As discussed in the recent Brookings Institution report, “Signs of Life: The Growth of Biotechnology Centers in the U.S.” [1], California, with the sixth largest economy in the world, possesses a very sizable fraction of the world’s biotechnology industry. It possesses three of the nation’s five mature biotechnology industry clusters, clusters being a passé and somewhat overused term that includes the involvement of universities. As seen in previous articles in this series and in a forthcoming report, concerns for workforce development in biotechnology industry clusters, although ranked highly in terms of strategic planning for cluster stability, retention, and competitiveness, usually arise quite late in the scheme of things, in marked deference to life blood elements, which include capital financing, real estate, facility creation, transportation, water accessibility, management talent, leadership, etc. True attention to workforce development is only possible when a cluster moves into a position where one or more of its companies have passed from the research boutique mode into commercialization and profitability. In 2003, it is likely that 45 of the over 1,300 biotechnology companies scored by Ernst & Young [2] will be profitable. California is home to a sizable number of profitable companies, and thus several of its regions may be viewed as having had the luxury to be able to address workforce developmental matters. For the purposes of this commentary, I am setting aside the involvement of colleges, universities, and research institutes in research training, Ph.D. production, and postdoctoral and physician-scientist training. The importance of these programs to the formation and stabilization of companies cannot be underestimated, but industry clusters in the United States do not dwell on the analysis of, or modulation of, existing research training programs (or the creation of new ones), leaving those decisions to the regional institutions and their own academic responsiveness to the dynamics of the various academic fields identified with biotechnology. As seen in previous articles in this series, the biotechnology industry clusters are mainly concerned with their workforce as it relates to the postbasic research phase. In California, as in the nation, elements of biotechnology workforce development are split among a variety of regional, city, country, and state governmental organizations that play differing roles depending upon the level of their expertise and attention (unemployed workers, displaced workers, vocational-educational, entry level, school-to-career, welfare-to-work, community college, senior higher education, etc.) These include the 57 California Workforce Investment Boards regional organizations authorized to disburse federal workforce development funds (e.g. those from the Workforce Investment Act), the California Employment Training Panel, the Labor Divisions of Economic Development Departments, regional Economic Development Corporations, the California Technology, Trade and Commerce Department, etc. Importantly, despite the prominence of California in global biotechnology, the state government and the various regional, city, and county ‡ Executive Director, California State University Biotechnology Program (CSUPERB); Chair, Council of Biotechnology Centers/ Biotechnology Industry Organization Workforce Committee; Chair, Workforce Committee and Board of Directors Member, BIOCOMsandiego; Chair Labor/Education Committee and Board of Directors Member, Southern California Biomedical Council; Member of the Board of Directors, BayBio. To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel. : 619-594-1203; Fax: 619-5945291; E-mail: sdahms@sciences.sdsu. edu. 1 We define a cluster as an assembly of biotechnology companies, other companies that provide support (legal, architectural, financial, materials, regulatory, etc.), economic development agencies, workforce investment boards, a regional trade organization, higher education, private research organizations, etc. The concept that regional universities are part of an industry cluster may not settle well with some university faculty, but it remains a fact that universities play a role in formation of and stabilization of industry clusters. 2 E. D. Sevier, manuscript in preparation. © 2003 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY EDUCATION Printed in U.S.A. Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 197–202, 2003