Sub-National Capabilities to Perform a Strategic Innovation-Policy, the Example of Biotech in Munich

In this paper we argue that sub-national public units do have a wide range of innovation policy related tools and thus the opportunity to conduct a proper and effective innovation policy, independently from superior policy levels. However, as the following example of Bavarian technology and innovation policy in the field of biotechnology discloses, several crucial particularities have to be taken into account. These are on the one hand organisational specifications of the promoted industry, on the other hand the connectivity to policy programmes on higher policy levels. To examine that kind of policy measures, the authors have applied a new biographical method on the firm level. In so doing we thoroughly examined knowledge and financial flows of biotechnology companies in the Munich area and were hence able to soundly qualify the impact of sub-national policy measures. As a consequence the authors were enabled to identify key institutional arrangements, as the focus on one specific location (clustering), the setting up of public support organizations as well as public Venture Capital (VC), and others. The surprising result of our survey: Munich firms benefited much more from sub-national policies than from any other policy level.