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Dunrie Greiling Ph.D., Ann Arbor, MI 48105

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What’s in a name? Industry groups differ on life science and biotech terms

February 8, 2016 by Dunrie

Last week, I attended the Michigan Bio-Industry Growth Summit. The event bag included reports from sponsoring organizations MichBio, Business Leaders for Michigan, and the University Research Corridor. Attendees also received a report from the national Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). In these reports, I noticed some variation in names for the life science or biotech industry.

Life science industry leaders use different names

Handouts from the Bio-industry growth summit - showing different terms for life science or biotech
Handouts from the Michigan Bio-industry Growth Summit – showing different terms for life science or biotech
  • MichBio titled its report the Michigan Bio-Industry Roadmap for Success (Roadmap available from MichBio site).
  • BIO named its report Bioscience Economic Development in the States: Legislation and Job Creation Best Practices (download the PDF from BIO).
  • In its New Michigan: The 2015 Report on Michigan’s Progress in Leveraging Six Opportunities, Business Leaders for Michigan called “Life Sciences” one of the six opportunities for the state (download the report from Business Leaders for Michigan).
  • In its 9th Annual Economic Impact Report (2016), the University Research Corridor (URC) reported on “Life Sciences” in Michigan (read the report at the URC site).

I imagine that in each report’s editorial meeting, a fair bit of time was spent selecting each noun and verb for the title and section headings. Perhaps MichBio went with Bio-Industry to be more inclusive of activities that broaden the definition of biotech, or to differentiate commercial activities from primary research, I’m not sure. They are the domain experts, so I trust their choice was for a good reason.

I asked Google which name was “better”

Yet, for Twitter and for my first post about the event, I opted for biotech. For Twitter, “biotech” was shorter than “bio-industry”, and short and sweet is better in that medium.

When I got back to the office, I did more research. Google Trends gave me the popularity of these terms in searches. Google Trends aggregates all searches, and therefore emphasizes what the general public calls the industry.

Worldwide and regional life science searches

Since I published this post, the embeds no longer work well, so here’s a link to the Google Trends graphs of

  • World wide life science searches
  • US life science searches
  • Michigan life science searches

As you can see in the graphs, the terms “biotech” and “biotechnology” are more popular worldwide than life science, bio-industry, or biosciences. When we look only in the United States, life science searches are similarly popular to those for biotechnology, but biotech is consistently higher (except for September in each year when life sciences jumps up to or above biotech’s level). The Michigan data is noisier but appears similar to the US as a whole. In all regions, bio-industry and bioscience lag the other terms. If I keep playing with the terms, plurals matter for life science and biosciences, so I chose the most popular variant for these graphs – life science and biosciences.

Closing Thoughts – specific vs. popular phrases

The cross-industry groups, Business Leaders for Michigan and the University Research Corridor, used the more general and more popular term for the industry (life sciences) than did either of the associations with “bio” in their name. Over time, the bio-groups may teach the general population the new terms, search popularity is volatile. Yet, more commonly-used terms (e.g. biotech or life science) should go farther in the near term. Sometimes experts know and use too many words for our own good.

By using “bio-industry”, MichBio might be limiting the reach of its Roadmap. MichBio’s Roadmap is a call-to-action to its members, it is speaking to other experts. Fine distinctions matter to experts, but they might muddy the communication to regular folks. The association and the Roadmap also needs to speak to non-experts—such as legislators and educators. If I were at that editorial meeting, I would have brought search data like this to the table and argued for the more commonly-used terms in the report title.

When I tweeted about the event, I picked #biotech, but within Michigan, life science would have been just as popular and I chose that as the focus keyword for this post.

Filed Under: Biotech Tagged With: biotech, life-science, marketing

Michigan Biotech: MichBio Growth Summit – February 2016

February 4, 2016 by Dunrie

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

Table of Contents - Michigan Biotech Roadmap for Success
Table of Contents – Michigan Bio-Industry 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

Filed Under: Biotech Tagged With: biotech, life-science, marketing

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