Building A Record Of Worldviews

by Yali Friedman and Mike May

Although the past couple of years have created challenges of historical proportions for biotechnology, there is, perhaps, no better time to record the innovative health of the field. As Scientific American Worldview: A Global Biotechnology Perspective enters its second year, we begin to build a record of tracking the innovative capabilities in biotechnology around the world.

This year, as in our inaugural issue, we use a collection of approaches to explore biotech’s most compelling trends and developments worldwide. Among them, reveals Ted Agres in the opening article, is the growing sense that the field is financially on the mend.

Nevertheless, some regions would be better described as building, rather than repairing, capabilities in biotechnology. Since China comes up frequently in discussions on the future of biotech, we feature a special section that takes readers inside the changes there. We deliver on-the-ground reports from several biotech-related parks, such as the Beijing Pharma and Biotech Center and China Medical City, and include comments from a range of experts. Furthermore, Peter Gwynne gives us an overview of where China’s biotech community is gaining ground, along with the hurdles it still faces.

Mike May

To achieve a broader perspective on the current challenges and successes in biotechnology, our Worldview Scorecard section provides new innovation-capacity scores for 39 countries. As this year’s data reveal, even 12 months can yield dramatic shifts in the innovative capabilities of some nations. Moreover, our 2010 Scorecard section tackles a range of new areas, from brain drain to corruption.

But since numbers alone cannot tell the full story, we also present a second season of one dozen vignettes—short essays that explore countries around the globe to seek out pioneering companies, personalities, policies and more.
Completing our coverage of the news, numbers, analysis and opinions that make up today’s biotechnology landscape, this issue contains several feature articles with interesting angles on the field. For example, Sharon Guynup looks into industrial biotech’s potential to battle climate change, and turns up an intriguing pair of collaborators in the process.

As this year’s Worldview confirms, the pace of change in biotechnology is rapid. While you read this issue, please keep in mind any ideas that it triggers. We look forward to your comments and are always seeking new stories to cover in the years ahead.