Starting up and growing stronger: life lessons from a biotechnology company

Abstract

Biotechnology is widely viewed as a field of economic activity that exemplifies a new (science-based, knowledge-intensive, post-industrial, networked, localized) way to organize production. For that reason it has been a frequent subject of research in organizational studies, industrial economics, and regional science. From this research, the picture emerges of a sector that is characterized by small, high-tech companies, recently started (often as a university spin-off), clustering in regions where world-class universities are present, benefitting from each other through ‘knowledge spillovers’, and providing a stream of science-based products that can be absorbed and brought to the market by large companies. This standard picture, or stereotype, is largely based on studies of medical or pharmaceutical uses, and it does not necessarily apply to other domains of biotechnology. To sustain this claim, we will describe the birth and early life of an entrepreneurial Dutch firm in plant biotechnology. It will appear that this firm's biography deviates from the standard picture in many ways. It is not a university spin-off, uses regional resources only sparsely, tends to prefer arm's-length collaboration and, noticeably, it handles its intellectual property in a very distinctive way.