To capture an emerging industry: using industrial standards to identify the biotech industry

Abstract

Standard industrial classification systems are the cornerstone of quantitative research in several fields. Data collected and coded on the basis of such systems often provide the most complete and accessible material with which to investigate, quantify and map the industrial landscape, and understand the economy at large. However, as relatively static classifications, they present researchers attempting to capture new, emerging and growth industries with a number of problems. Our understanding of the dynamics of economic development is largely based on aggregated firm data, often categorised and identified using an intertwined system of national and international industrial classification standards. This paper uses the example of the biotech industry in testing the ongoing appropriateness of one such industrial classification system, namely the Swedish industrial classification system.