Amsterdamse Innovatie Motor (AIM) promotes innovation, cooperation and new economic activities in the Amsterdam area and one of the sectors on which it focuses is Life Sciences. AIM would like its initiatives within the regional Life Sciences sector to be boosted to the highest possible performance. As a development organisation of a relatively young bio-cluster (2004) it would like to learn from organisations that are more advanced in this sector.

Amsterdam BioMed Cluster was the central cluster in this competitive benchmark. We first analysed this cluster closely by means of a panel discussion, and written and oral interviews.

Afterwards, InnoTact selected nine internationally leading bio-clusters and proposed that the development organisations join a benchmark consortium specifically set up for this. InnoTact found that the following enterprises were prepared to participate: Leiden BioSciencePark (NL), FlandersBio (Belgium), East of England (UK), BioDundee (UK), Medicon Valley (DenmarkK/Sweden), BioRiver (Germany), Munich Biotech Cluster (Germany), Massachusetts Life Sciences (USA) and Stockholm Science City (Sweden).

The major points in this study were the ‘status’ of the cluster, the methods used by the development organisation to develop the bio-cluster and the deployment of resources. An extensive web-based questionnaire, site visits and telephone interviews with the responsible position holders provided a wealth of information and enabled InnoTact to compare ten bio-clusters.

Based on the benchmark, InnoTact was able to identify the critical success factors in the development of bio-clusters and to provide AIM with effective advice on how develop Amsterdam BioMed Cluster into an internationally leading cluster. AIM now has to material for making effective strategic decisions.

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