Bio-Tech Investment Should Be Leveraged

03/03/2006

Paul Munnis

The proposal to get Minnesota invested in bio-technology is a really good idea. The costs are not excessive, $33M per year for ten years is on the cheap. Using bonding to invest is an okay approach too since we can repay them in two ways: added jobs means more revenue and added patent portfolios will attract added investment by corporations in our state.

The resultant patent portfolio will endow the U of M for years to come.

It makes sense to do this at the U of M and the Mayo Clinic because that is where there are large concentrations of post-docs who can work on the research.

With all of that said, then we look around and see that adjacent states are also investing along the same lines. We know what that means: redundancy through parallel competition.

Wouldn’t it be better if we did a multi-state collaboration? That would mean confining fields of research by State and campus of course and would require some coordination between facilities.

That approach would certainly put a laser like focus on the research. It would also eliminate redundancy. It would make the mid-west very vital in the research since we would not have to invest multiple times to buy the same knowledge base. The combined effect would be to leverage our money and raise the odds of a mid-western patent portfolio as a result.

After all, the more the wealth is spread around the mid-west the better the overall economic and regional health will be for all of us.

Instead of Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas, and Wisconsin, all competing and doing possibly redundant work we should collaborate, focus, and raise the odds of regional success.