Governing Board

Chairman,
Innovation Institute
Donald Dubendorf
Attorney, Grinnell, Dubendorf & Smith

Mitchell Adams
Executive Director,
MTC
Christopher Anderson
President,
Massachusetts
High Technology
Council
Ian Bowles
President and CEO,
MassINC
Robert Culver
President and CEO,
MassDevelopment
Philip Cheney
PhD, Raytheon
(retired)
Thomas G. Davis
Executive Director
The Greater New
Bedford Industrial
Foundation
Thomas M. Finneran
President,
Massachusetts
Biotechnology
Council
David D. Fleming
Group Senior Vice
President, Genzyme
Corporation
Richard M.
Freeland, PhD
President,
Northeastern
University
C. Jeffrey Grogan,
Partner,
Monitor Group
Matthew Harris,
CEO and Managing
Partner, Village
Ventures, Inc.
Corinne A. Johnson
General Manager
and Area Executive,
General Electric
Aircraft Engines
Ranch C. Kimball
Secretary of
Economic
Development,
Commonwealth of
Massachusetts
Paul Martin, PhD
Dean of
Research & IT,
Harvard University
Peggy Newell
Vice Provost,
Tufts University
Lawrence Reilly
Sr. Vice President
and General
Counsel,
National Grid USA
Ira
Rubenzahl, PhD
President,
Springfield
Technical
Community
College
Pieter Schiller
General Partner,
Advanced
Technology
Ventures
Stephen C. Smith
Executive Director,
Southeastern
Regional Planning
Commission
Mitchell G. Tyson
Chairman of the Board, AmberWave Systems
Corporation
Karl Weiss, PhD
Chairman,
MTC Board of Directors
Jack M.
Wilson, PhD
President,
University of
Massachusetts

.............................

Pat Larkin
Director
John Adams
Innovation Institute

That’s the recommendation of top CEOs on how Massachusetts policymakers should foster the growth of the Life Sciences industry cluster, a complex array of public and private sector entities employing more than 600,000 Massachusetts citizens and contributing $26.6 billion to the Commonwealth’s economy.

Henri A. Termeer, Chairman, President and CEO of Genzyme Corporation, counseled policymakers to think in a 10-,20-, and 30- year time frame when making investments.	Patrick J. Sullivan, Chairman, President and CEO of Cytyc, praised Massachusetts as being the best place for innovation. The state, he said, has to do a better job integrating higher education and business to compete against places like California.	Michael J. Astrue, an executive formerly of TKT and Biogen, urged policymakers to create a culture of predictability regarding permitting and regulation.

he Governing Board of the John Adams Innovation Institute met May 2nd in Boston to discuss recommendations to Massachusetts policymakers on how best to grow the innovative Life Sciences industry cluster. The meeting capped five months of extended conversations with economists, private sector leaders, elected officials and major research institutions. The groundwork for the recommendations emerged from discussions at the 2003 Life Sciences summit, convened by Harvard University President Lawrence Summers and Michael Porter, Director of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard.

The high-level dialogue at the Governing Board meeting was led by Henri A. Termeer, Chairman, President and CEO of Genzyme Corporation, Patrick J. Sullivan, Chairman, President and CEO of Cytyc Corporation and Michael J. Astrue, formerly of TKT and Biogen.

The recommendations addressed four strategic areas: job retention and creation; R&D, technology transfer and commercialization; workforce development; and Life Sciences cluster development through the formation and operation of a strategic steering committee. (To view the draft recommendations, go to link here). A new element, state and federal regulatory support for small to mid-sized companies, was added during the discussion.

The governing board meeting held at the historic Boston Athenaeum began with an overview by Ranch C. Kimball, the state’s Secretary of Economic Development, detailing the challenges facing Massachusetts.

Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer then spoke about the future of the biotech industry. He predicted that the industry's needs will change, responding to the creation and delivery of specific personalized medicines that work with great predictability. The future biotech industry, Termeer said, will feature “smaller facilities, be more labor intensive, and require more intimate connections” in the translation effort needed to bring new products to the marketplace.

Termeer counseled that instead of thinking about the immediacy of “next year,” Massachusetts needs to think in terms of “a 10- to 20- to 30-year framework” for investment. He cautioned against picking winners and investing everything in specific technologies. Rather, he urged policymakers to foster a “culture” of cooperation between business, academia and government, citing the collaboration that helped Genzyme build its facility in Allston in 1993.

Cytyc’s Sullivan and Michael Astrue followed Termeer with detailed discussions revealing some of the barriers faced by biotech firms in locating facilities in Massachusetts. Echoing Termeer, both Astrue and Sullivan suggested creating a culture of predictability regarding permitting and regulation.

Sullivan, who projects that Cytyc will grow from a company with $300 million in revenue in 2003 to $1 billion in 2008, urged Massachusetts to be more aggressive in reaching out to companies, detailing the manner in which the president of the University of North Carolina approached Cytyc and asked: “What can we do for you?”

The consensus of the meeting was best summed up by Thomas Finneran, President of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council: “We need a multi-year effort, not a one-shot event. We need to demonstrate a persistence, a predictability, in our policy efforts.”

Don Dubendorf, chair of the 23-member Governing Board of the John Adams Innovation Institute, praised the quality of the discussion, the keen insights of the participants, and the outcome of the meeting.

The next steps, Dubendorf said, are to translate the policy recommendations into a plan of action, under the collaborative guidance of an independent Life Sciences steering committee. “I would like to see the John Adams Innovation Institute embrace the good work of the academic, industry, nonprofit and public partners that coalesced around the Life Sciences summit. We can support the framework for these partners to agree on a clear, coherent Life Sciences policy and provide the vehicle to follow through on recommendations. We’re in this for the long haul.”