Feature
Life Sciences Boost Economy, Create Jobs
February 8, 2007
A Q&A with Todd Pedersen, then-director of life sciences initiatives at the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC)
Todd Pedersen is the former director of life sciences initiatives at the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC).
Todd Pedersen caught the life sciences bug early: While earning an MBA at IU's Kelley School of Business he co-founded the Health and Life Sciences Society and was a graduate assistant for the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. The IEDC helps drive Indiana's life sciences economy by helping new businesses get a foothold. Pedersen spoke with the IU Life Sciences Initiative about Indiana's potential to become a leader in the life sciences.
How did you become interested in the life sciences?
When I was in law school at IU, a friend's father, who used to be on the medical faculty at IU and was a president of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons [Dr. James Strickland] was starting an orthopedic products company. My friend and I left law school to joint the venture. That introduced me to the worlds of medical device marketing, start-ups, and venture capital.
When we talk about the life sciences as a driver of the new economy, what does that mean? What kind of economic potential are we talking about?
It's about creating high skilled jobs that provide better wages and new opportunities in the state. For example, a company called CoLucid Pharmaceuticals spun out of Lilly because Lilly was willing to free up technology. And now CoLucid is drawing major venture capital and management players from Boston and North Carolina to help run the company. And that's created high paying jobs. The IEDC's mission is to increase the per capita income in the state, and that takes high skilled, high paying jobs. And obviously we need more life sciences companies to create those jobs and qualified engineers, scientists, and MBAs to take the jobs.
What are Indiana's strengths when it comes to the life sciences?
Our life sciences infrastructure. A lot of the states we're competing with are trying to buy their way in. For example, Florida spent millions to get a branch of the Scripps Research Institute. But we already have have the IU School of Medicine, IU science departments, Purdue, Rose-Hulman, Lilly, Zimmer, and other organizations driving the life sciences. In fact, Indiana is ranked right near the top when it comes to life sciences infrastructure. So we've got the assets here; why not leverage them?
What about venture capital and angel investing... how do we attract some of that money away from the coasts and toward the heartland?
In 2002, Indiana was in the bottom ten states in terms of attracting venture capital. Today we're ranked 21st. So we're moving up the ladder. Five years ago there were no local VC firms looking at the life sciences. Today there are between 15 and 20 Indiana VC firms looking at local life sciences companies every day. And, of course, there's the IEDC's 21st Century Fund, which is focused on seed capital and bridging gap between research and product development. The IEDC awarded close to $31 million last year to Indiana companies. The best thing we can do to attract more VC funding to Indiana is to keep funding new companies and technologies to capitalize on our existing life sciences infrastructure.
What roles do IU and other universities in the state play in the economic development of the life sciences?
Universities are the IEDC's greatest partners because they provide research and faculty members with connections to life sciences who understand clinical trials and how to vet technologies. When a company goes to the IEDC for funding, the IEDC in turn can go to university faculty members and administrators with questions about the validity of the technology that the company is proposing.
Even more importantly, universities are engines to create technologies that we can fund through the 21st Century Fund and help create spinouts that will move into research technology centers. It's a constant collaboration.
Ten years from now, where do you see Indiana, economically, in terms of life science?
I believe we can be in the top 10 in terms of VC life sciences funding because if you look at what IBM is doing, their strategy is to move toward life sciences industries, and they can pick anywhere in the world. And right now Indiana has buzz with them. If you want a history lesson of how powerful that can be, look at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina [the largest research park in the United States]. And now there's a good chance that IBM wants to engage Indiana.
We're now starting to see major players like IBM coming here more frequently because they want to develop a strategy around what's going on here at the universities, Lilly, and all the rest. Ultimately it's about finding strategic ways to provide better business modeling to existing companies. Are there cluster activities that we need to support more strongly? How do we keep workforce growing? The idea is to try to make the whole life sciences pie bigger and keep it growing.
