The development of the Italian biotechnology industry

Biotechnologies are one of the most important emergent technologies whose applications can generate a significant growth for industries based on knowledge. In Italy the business of biotechnology has been developed much later than in other industrialised countries and the empirical data on biotechnology companies is limited and incomplete. This study strives to fill this gap with the aim of analysing the situation of this industrial sector in Italy. In particular the objectives of this study are the following ones: - to take a census of Italian biotechnology companies; we have carried out a census of all the entrepreneurial organisations that use the biotechnology in order to develop new products/process or to improve the existing ones; - to identify the profile of these companies with particular reference to their number and localisation, age, size, applications segments of biotechnologies, etc; - to verify the existence of clusters of companies with similar characteristics that are internally homogeneous groups but heterogeneous among them; - to analyse the development model of biotechnology industry in Italy. In order to develop this study, the first step was to select the Italian companies that could really be defined biotechnology companies; for this reason we used different sources among which professional and trade associations, webs site specialised in biotechnologies, interviews with managers and experts etc. Once we have identified these companies (one hundred), we send them a questionnaire in order both to make the profile of this industry and to identify clusters of companies (that are internally homogeneous groups). It emerged the existence of four clusters of biotechnology firms, that are statistical different in terms of the defined grouping variables (age, size, degree of newness of the biotechnologies, level of R&D integration, level of industrialisation/services of the sector). The clusters identified are the following ones: - cluster 1 includes service firms; - cluster 2 is characterised by new biotechnology firms, that are specialised in the early stages of the innovative process; - cluster 3 includes industrialised integrated firms; - cluster 4 is characterised by integrated firms that are less industrialised than firms belonging to cluster 3. By analysing the characteristics of these clusters, we derived some interesting considerations about the development of biotechnology industry in Italy.