Scientific American and BIO worldVIEW Scorecard: A Global Biotechnology Ranking

Scientific American gathered and crunched a large amount of data to try to generate an objective, empirical ranking of 36 different countries’ biotechnology output and potential.

Here’s the special issue homepage, and here’s the scorecard page; but there are several interesting accompanying articles, particularly for those who have been following our Trends in 2009. See if either of these ring a bell:

• Protecting IP: Anything but Simple “Countries that once ignored intellectual property now embrace it…”; or
• The Regulatory Battle Over Biosimilars

I encourage you to check out the whole thing; but for all the Canadians out there who don’t want to read it for the articles, here’s the centerpiece:

Good news:

Canada ranks in the top 10 globally in IP Protection and ranks 5th globally in Intensity (a measure designed to give proper weight to “small countries with strong biotechnology activities”).

Bad news:

Canada misses the top 10 globally in Enterprise Support, Education/Workforce [really?], and Foundations.

Canada misses the overall top 10 by a hair as well, scoring an overall 2.9 versus a tie of 3.0 for Australia, Finland, New Zealand and Switzerland.

I am off to their presentation to “discuss” Canada’s failure to crack the top 10