Industry association MichBio organized yesterday’s bio-industry growth summit in Lansing. This Michigan biotech event featured national and regional leaders, including legislators (agenda here).
Michigan Biotech Roadmap for Success
MichBio also launched their Michigan Bio-Industry Roadmap for Success. This roadmap was developed through interviews, focus group, surveys, and comparison to peer states.
Event attendees received a print copy of the executive summary for the roadmap (~40 pages), still fragrant from the printer. Director Stephen Rapundalo, Ph.D., presented the highlights to the attendees. The Roadmap provided competitive benchmarking of Michigan in total bio-industry employment, expenditures, grants, patents, and venture capital. For employment, the roadmap breaks the bio-industry category into subcategories, specifically:
- agri-biosciences,
- drugs & pharmaceuticals,
- medical devices & equipment,
- research, testing & medical laboratories, and
- bioscience-related distribution (logistics).
The roadmap evaluated Michigan’s rank and then provided specific recommendations for industry growth, business climate, innovation, education & talent, and access to capital. Rapundalo announced that a full version of the Roadmap should be released this month. I will post a link to any online documents here if/when they become available.
Recurring Themes – Michigan Biotech Education and Talent
A recurring theme from the panel and from attendees was talent. Panelists called for biotech-oriented education for entry-level positions. Panelists discussed having to recruit talent back to Michigan from the coasts for senior/specialized biotech leadership positions.
Being a digitally-focused person, I did some live-tweeting of the event and made sure to connect in person with others who were tweeting. Here are a few example tweets from my own and others takeaways from the event.
MichBio CEO Rapundalo presents the Roadmap: Building MI into a biosciences leader pic.twitter.com/c8YasqxW41
— MichBio (@michbio) February 3, 2016
Today @michbio #GrowthSummit #biotech #bioscience & speaking on state advocacy efforts-5 states enacted laws all 5priorities @AdvaMedUpdate
— Liz Powell (@G2Gconsulting) February 3, 2016
@DrRogerNewton – emerging theme of @michbio #industrygrowthsummit need to address MI education at all levels to secure talent pool @urcmich
— Brit Affolter-Caine (@BritanyAffolter) February 3, 2016
Talent mgt. is a recurring theme from panelists at #michbio #biotech growth summit // @michbio pic.twitter.com/e3I5AkEqx0
— Jenn Rohl (@jennrohl) February 3, 2016
Roger Newton, Mark Leeahy and Liz Powell discuss bio-industry in #michigan at @michbio Growth Summit @medicaldevices pic.twitter.com/4XxcgZInLu
— The SearchLite (@TheSearchLite) February 3, 2016
#Michigan Sen @rebekahwarren thank you 4 your leadership in advocating 4 #bioscience industry & #innovation @michbio pic.twitter.com/cgtFwFdpmA
— Rachele Downs (@rachelejdowns) February 3, 2016
.@MarkJForchette — playbook for #biotech success: vision, technology, talent (character is key), and culture // @michbio
— Dunrie Greiling (@dunrie) February 3, 2016