Introduction

In Germany, the commercial development of the biotechnology sector began somewhat later than in other countries. After the restrained initial development of the early nineties, the biotech ‘founding boom’ began, following amendments in the genetic engineering law in 1993, and the BioRegio competition, initiated by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) in 1995. The growth was encouraged by the long-lasting rallying of technology shares at the German stock exchanges (new markets), all succeeding in making up for lost ground in the area of biotechnology, and helping regional biotech clusters of enterprises and research institutes to emerge. However, in the aftermath of worldwide poor economic performance and the bursting of the dot-com bubble, Germany also set upon a period of consolidation.

Now, after the first two decades of modern, commercial biotechnology in Germany, the following questions arise: How much economic potential has this technology got? Can it make a significant contribution to the economic development of the country? In order to be able to properly answer these questions, and others, an extensive analysis of Germany as a biotech location is required. The core inquiries are: How do the key economic figures for biotech in Germany look? How many enterprises are dealing with biotechnology in Germany? How many people are employed in the commercial biotechnology sector, and what is the turnover of this sector as a whole?

However, the answers to these questions require a dependable approach to some fundamental concepts. According to the field itself, and up to now this has been a real issue: What is biotechnology? The international and national definitions for this term differ strongly. Ultimately, biotechnology is a broadly diversified industry, with a large variety of technologies, products and services operating within very different economic ranges - be they for medicine, agriculture or major industrial applications.

In December 2004, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) consolidated the existing definitions for the term biotechnology. The national biotechnology company survey has provided the first means for analysis of the biotech industry in Germany based on these OECD standards. With this, a worldwide comparison of the conditions and development of biotechnology is now possible, a vast improvement on the flux of previous definitions and interpretations.

Since this is the first survey of its nature, the results are particularly useful for an analysis and description of the present condition of the German biotech industry.