Betting on Biotech: Innovation and the Limits of Asia's Developmental State

4. Manufacturing “Progress”

113 Chapter 4 Manufacturing “Progress” In late 2007, I gave a talk in Taiwan on the development of commercial biotech. By then, Taiwan’s drive to upgrade into biotech had been in full gear for nearly two decades,and Taiwan’s aspirations in the sector had become a central part of the discourse about the island’s economic future. I began my talk by recounting a recent biotech investment deal that had been spearheaded by the government, one that seemed, at least from a technical perspective, to be based on a promising drug candidate. I suggested that it was by all industry-insider accounts a sound,if not spectacular , investment deal. It was also pointed out that the Taiwan government had invested US$20 million into the start-up firm. During Q&A, an audience member asked how many new jobs would result from the creation of this firm. Given its start-up nature, I responded that likely 15–20 employment opportunities would be a reasonable expectation, to which the questioner asked, I assume rhetorically, “And how is this deal a good investment for Taiwan’s economy?” A Waning Appetite I recount this story because it reveals quite clearly the popular evaluations of Taiwan’s ongoing efforts to make it in commercial biotech. The exchange 114 BETTING ON BIOTECH highlighted people’s growing impatience and frustration with the slow pace of biotech development in Taiwan. It betrayed a sense that people outside the sector were beginning to feel the extraordinary efforts, investments, and resources committed to commercializing biotech were perhaps not worth it. There was, to be sure, a palpable skepticism among many in the audience . The concern about how these investments would specifically benefit Taiwan’s economy in terms of economic returns and new job opportunities also revealed a techno-nationalist impulse. President Chen Shui-Bian himself had described biotech as the “most important industry to Taiwan’s future economic development,”1 also stating, “If we don’t do this today then we will regret it tomorrow.”2 Analytically, the challenge from the audience member illuminated how the notion of “progress” is contested: what I saw as a promising commercial lead was to someone else an example of technological largesse from which reasonable returns were unlikely. What was most significant about the exchange, however, was that it confirmed a growing sense that in Taiwan (and elsewhere) the appetite for the long-term realities of biotech development is beginning to wane, and that the long-range prospects of overcoming the myriad uncertainties inherent in commercializing biotech have become less tolerable, or simply viewed as no longer worth it. People’s patience is understandably beginning to run out. Indeed, although billions of dollars have been allocated to commercial biotech from government and industry over the last two decades, growth rates in both inputs (investment) and outputs (commercialization) are leveling off. Economic returns have been underwhelming. Fewer than expected new higher-value jobs have been created. And to the extent that developments in the biotech sector are resulting in any wealth accumulation, such wealth is concentrated among only a few. People in Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore are beginning to question the socioeconomic value of the biotech sector,just as governments there have also begun to wonder about the political value of continuing to bet on biotech. What has become particularly troubling is that private sector investment in the life sciences has slowed considerably in recent years,threatening the long-term imperatives of biotech innovation. In Korea,Taiwan,and Singapore,investors have begun to lose their tolerance for the uncertainties inherent in betting on biotech. 1. Cited in Jim Boyce, “Taiwan’s Biotech Clock Ticking...”Topics:The Magazine of International Business in Taiwan 32 (2002). 2. Cited in Dan Nystedt, “Chen Asks Foreigners to Help in Building Biotech,” Taipei Times, August 7, 2001. MANUFACTURING “PROGRESS” 115 There are multiple reasons for this, many of which have been covered in this book thus far but are nonetheless worth reviewing. First, as relative newcomers to the life sciences field and science-based industrialization more generally, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore have had to confront a very long and steep learning curve. As I described in Chapter 3, there is a lack of both investment and bio-industrial experience in the region. It is not as though stakeholders in Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore do not understand the longterm imperatives of biotech innovation, however. Rather, after several years of...