The impact of public funding of life sciences research on the demography of the Austrian biotech industry during the last decade

Abstract

This thesis has sought to analyse the impact of public funding of life sciences research on the demography of the Austrian biotech industry over the last decade (2002 - 2013) and also on other outputs such as headcount dedicated to life sciences activities, number of patents and scientific publications. The introduction and literature review of this thesis provide a broad overview on the importance of investing in research and development as a political and social strategy to promote competitiveness and economic prosperity. Especially the policies to promote innovation that are being implemented at the European and national levels are described but the focus is then shifted to the particular field of Life Sciences and the biotech industry in Austria. The evolution of the funding of life sciences research by national and international public agencies over the last decade is introduced as a background to the further analysis on the Austrian biotech industry. This thesis goes on to describe the annual demography of the Austrian biotech industry and the major players and mechanisms promoting it, namely the national agencies actively financing start-ups and financing R&D of already existing companies, and other sources of capital such as private investors and venture capitalists. Correlation studies of the above-mentioned outputs in function of the annual public funding of life sciences research were performed in order to characterise the impact of the research public funding on the demography of the Austrian biotech industry. Since correlation does not imply causation there was the need to contextualise better these studies with the real-life perception of the biotech founders and managers. Therefore, a survey among these individuals was conducted in order to assess the perceived importance of public research funding to their businesses, especially the foundation. The overall results obtained throughout this thesis strengthen the hypothesis that the increment of public funding for life sciences research in Austria eventually stimulates the growth of biotech businesses in the future. Also the growth of the headcount performing life sciences activities, the number of patents, and scientific publications in Austria has been linked to the increment of public funding for life sciences research. These outputs are potential enablers or promoters of new biotech businesses and therefore it was not particularly surprising to observe their annual rate growing together with the Austrian biotech industry in function of the life science research funding. Finally, this thesis suggests two important possible follow-ups that would consist on the one hand to assess and compare the performance of other fields in Austria that are recipients of large public research funds such as Information and Communications Technology; and on the other hand to benchmark the Austrian life sciences and biotech business performance with that of other European countries. To extract the full meaning of the results obtained by this thesis it is important to contextualise and benchmark it against other fields and countries of at least similar economic performance. Nevertheless, this thesis already offers a novel and inedited perspective and insight into the Austrian life sciences research public funding and the demography of its biotech industry that could be valuable to carry out future studies or even making funding decisions.

This thesis has sought to analyse the impact of public funding of life sciences research on the demography of the Austrian biotech industry over the last decade (2002 - 2013) and also on other outputs such as headcount dedicated to life sciences activities, number of patents and scientific publications. The introduction and literature review of this thesis provide a broad overview on the importance of investing in research and development as a political and social strategy to promote competitiveness and economic prosperity. Especially the policies to promote innovation that are being implemented at the European and national levels are described but the focus is then shifted to the particular field of Life Sciences and the biotech industry in Austria. The evolution of the funding of life sciences research by national and international public agencies over the last decade is introduced as a background to the further analysis on the Austrian biotech industry. This thesis goes on to describe the annual demography of the Austrian biotech industry and the major players and mechanisms promoting it, namely the national agencies actively financing start-ups and financing R&D of already existing companies, and other sources of capital such as private investors and venture capitalists. Correlation studies of the above-mentioned outputs in function of the annual public funding of life sciences research were performed in order to characterise the impact of the research public funding on the demography of the Austrian biotech industry. Since correlation does not imply causation there was the need to contextualise better these studies with the real-life perception of the biotech founders and managers. Therefore, a survey among these individuals was conducted in order to assess the perceived importance of public research funding to their businesses, especially the foundation. The overall results obtained throughout this thesis