Biotech Buzz: Worcester's Second-City Complex Examined
Struggling for years to emerge from the enormous shadow cast by the Boston-based life sciences "epicenter of the world," local biotech executives are starting to advocate a different course, one that celebrates Worcester's ties to Boston, instead of cursing them.
"The number one thing we need to do is get off this kick of the individuality, independent thing," said Kevin O'Sullivan, president and CEO of Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives, a biotech incubator facility in Worcester. "From a life sciences perspective, we're not competing against Boston. We're competing in a global economy. Massachusetts is competing on a global stage. We need to get rid of the old conversation about Worcester as an independent place."
According to O'Sullivan, Worcester's life science cluster exists in large part because of, and not in spite of, the huge life sciences epicenter in and around Boston.
"If you think about why we've been successful in Worcester, it's largely because we're only 45 miles away from Boston and the epicenter of the world for life sciences," O'Sullivan said. "Our location fits very well with the notion of moving brains around the state. On average, only 10 percent of Worcester's life sciences work force is from Worcester."
O'Sullivan is not alone.
An Island No More
Peter Isakson, divisional vice president for immunology research at Abbott Bioresearch Center in Worcester, has publicly advocated folding Worcester into a larger "greater Boston" area in the mold of the San Francisco Bay area that includes the communities of San Jose and Oakland in California.
"San Jose, they're very similar to (Worcester)," said O'Sullivan. "When people look at the San Francisco Bay area, they should look at the Boston metro area in the same way. If we collaborate more, and look at ourselves more as a metropolitan area, investors will start to see that, and we'll show up more, not less."
O'Sullivan said that in years past, Worcester was "an island unto itself," with an inferiority complex to its bigger sister to the east.
Get Your Wagons Hitched
Today, that isn't the case, with Boston and Worcester acting as strong anchors to a vibrant life sciences corridor in between.
In this way, the "greater Boston" envisioned by Isakson is already a theoretical reality, if not a practical one.
"We are part of a cluster," O'Sullivan said. "I can think of nothing better than hitching our wagon to the most pre-eminent cluster of life sciences in the world."
To critics that say Worcester risks losing its identity by more closely embracing Boston, O'Sullivan notes the identity that Worcester has already forged for itself, including a Nobel Laureate, a world-class medical school, and top-notch laboratory and research space.
"One of Worcester's hindrances is that we always saw ourselves in a hunkered down way, as the second largest city in New England, but one that was dwarfed by the capital city," O'Sullivan said.
"We've got to throw that away. We have all these great things, a Nobel Prize, a great medical school," he continued. "We just need to show up more in Boston, make our voices heard, stop letting ourselves be second city. They just can't see it, but if we're a part of them, they will."
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