Regional Innovation Pattern: A Case of Beijing Biopharmaceutical Industrial Clusters

Introduction

Several scholars have noted the importance of agglomeration, including economic geography, management and organization science (Krugman, 1991; Decarolis & Deeds, 1999; Gittelman, 2007; Erden & von Krogh, 2011). Marshall (1920) argued that agglomeration economies exist in many industries owing to industry specialization, labor pooling and the spillover of knowledge between firms and institutions. Firms in industries where major inputs include industry R&D, university research and skilled labor are more likely to cluster than firms in industries where knowledge spillovers from such sources are less important (Audretsch & Feldman, 1996). The biopharmaceutical industry consists of firms that develop and / or manufacture drugs for human therapeutics and/or diagnostic purposes, and that have at least one product that can only be produced by biotechnological methods; that is, techniques and technologies that use the principles of genetics, immunology and molecular, cellular and structural biology to discover and develop new products (Audretsch, 2001). The biopharmaceutical industry tends to be highly geographically concentrated, and similar to the high geographic concentration found in the biotechnology industry (Prevezer, 1997; Zucker, et al, 1998; Wu et al., 2008).