Betting on Biotech

Joseph Wong

Description

After World War II, several late-developing countries registered astonishingly high growth rates under strong state direction, making use of smart investment strategies, turnkey factories, and reverse-engineering, and taking advantage of the postwar global economic boom. Among these economic miracles were postwar Japan and, in the 1960s and 1970s, the so-called Asian Tigers-Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan-whose experiences epitomized the analytic category of the "developmental state." In Betting on Biotech, Joseph Wong examines the emerging biotechnology sector in each of these three industrial dynamos. They have invested billions of dollars in biotech industries since the 1990s, but commercial blockbusters and commensurate profits have not followed. Industrial upgrading at the cutting edge of technological innovation is vastly different from the dynamics of earlier practices in established industries.The profound uncertainties of life-science-based industries such as biotech have forced these nations to confront a new logic of industry development, one in which past strategies of picking and making winners have given way to a new strategy of throwing resources at what remain very long shots. Betting on Biotech illuminates a new political economy of industrial technology innovation in places where one would reasonably expect tremendous potential-yet where billion-dollar bets in biotech continue to teeter on the brink of spectacular failure.

Sujets

• Sciences et techniques
• Political economy
• Manufacturing
• History of Asia
• Central
• Asia

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801463372
• Langue: English

Extrait

BETTING ON BIOTECH

BETTING ON BIOTECH

I NNOVAT I ON AND T HE L I MI TS OF ASI A’ S DE VE LOPME NTAL STAT E

J o s e p h W o n g

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2011 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2011 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wong, Joseph, 1973–  Betting on biotech : innovation and the limits of Asia’s developmental state / Joseph Wong.  p. cm.  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 9780801450327 (cloth: alk. paper)  1. Biotechnology industries—Korea (South) 2. Bio technology industries—Taiwan. 3. Biotechnology industries—Singapore. 4. Industrial policy—Korea (South) 5. Industrial policy—Taiwan. 6. Industrial policy—Singapore. I. Title.  HD9999.B443W66 2011  338.4'76606095—dc22 2011013630

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cloth printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Oliver

Co nte nts

Preface ix

Introduction: Betting on Biotech 1. From Mitigating Risk to Managing Uncertainty 2. Reorganizing the State 3. Organizing Bioindustry 4. Manufacturing “Progress” 5. Regulatory Uncertainty Conclusion: Beyond the Developmental State

Index 191

1

16 43 81 113 140

165

P r e f a c e

This book is about betting on commercial bio tech development in three key Asian economies: South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. After more than two hundred interviews with informants in the field, over twenty research trips to the region, and countless hours in the library and in front of my computer, I believe the bets that have been made there on biotech have not worked out in the ways that many had earlier anticipated, myself included. When I began this project in 2002, I aimed simply to revisit the idea of the developmental state and to rejuvenate what had become a relatively stagnant debate about political economy among the former newly industrializing countries. I intended to examine how the developmental state had evolved and adapted in the era of knowledgeintensive, sciencebased industrialization. I expected that the model would have undergone some refinement and adjustment but that its evolution would reflect the next stage of the developmental state. What I did not anticipate, at least initially, was that the developmental state would have retreated altogether, that what I was researching was in actuality innovationbeyondthe developmental state. In the course of writing this book, I have learned that sometimes things do not work out as you expect them to. Indeed, from the perspective of the eco nomic planner, scientist, or bioindustrial stakeholder in Asia, what had once been a sense of considerable optimism at the beginning of the first decade of the 2000s about the prospects of commercial biotech has now become a dreaded feeling of impending failure. At a 2010 conference at the University of Oxford, a wellinformed colleague from Taiwan put it to me bluntly: “Biotechnology is one of Taiwan’s biggest industrial failures.” I personally would not state it quite so starkly, yet I write in the concluding chapter that “over the seven years during which I conducted research in Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore for this book, I saw the star that was supposed to be bio technology dim quite considerably.” Indeed, though billions of dollars have been spent, institutions redesigned, universities and labs reoriented, regula tory regimes implemented, and a considerable amount of political capital expended on succeeding in commercial biotech over the past two decades,

ix