`Biotechnology' - the integrated use of biochemistry, microbiology, and chemical engineering for the technological application of the capabilities of microbes and cultured tissue cells - is quickly becoming pervasive and challenging, rapidly developing both new techniques and industries.
The Economic and Social Dynamics of Biotechnology - a joint project between Statistics Canada, the Program of Research on Innovation, Management and Economy (PRIME) at the University of Ottawa, and CIRANO at the University of Quebec in Montreal - brings together economic, social, and statistical views on the dynamics of this set of emerging technologies. It examines the costs as well as the benefits - the challenges as well as the choices - of the rapidly expanding science-based world of biodiversity, biopharmaceuticals, and bioinformatics, and it provides suggestions for future work and research. This project fits into an ongoing research program at Statistics Canada to develop meaningful indicators for science, technology, and innovation in a technology-intensive economy. This book tells the story of the inner workings of innovation systems, technological systems, and competence blocs in the production, use, and diffusion of knowledge.

I:Introduction.- 1. Tools for Analysing Biotechnology.- II: Frameworks.- 2. A Systems Framework for the Study of Economic and Social Dynamics of Biotechnology.- 3. The Industrial Potential of Biotechnology: A Competence Bloc Analysis.- 4. Biotechnology: Scientific Progress and Social Progress.- III: Measurement.- 5. A Challenge for Measuring Biotechnology Activities.- 6. Measuring the Economic Impacts of Biotechnology: From R&D to Applications.- 7. Strategy and Performance Factors Behind Rapid Growth in Canadian Biotechnology Firms.- 8. Assessing the Role of the University of California in the State's Biotechnology Economy.- IV: Impacts.- 9. Internationally Comparable Indicators on Biotechnology.- 10. The Contested International Regime for Biotechnology.- 11. Australian Biotechnology Firms: Problems in Appropriating Economic Returns to Knowledge.- 12. Competing Business Models in the French Biotechnology Industry.- 13. Knowledge, Markets and Biotechnology.- 14. Biotechnology and Policy in an Innovation System: Strategy, Stewardship and Sector Promotion.- V: Conclusion.- 15. Issues for Future Research, Measurement and Policy.- Notes.