Assembling ‘the bioeconomy’: Exploiting the power of the promissory life sciences

The rise of ‘the bioeconomy’

The term ‘the bioeconomy’, sometimes called the ‘bio-based economy’ or the ‘bio-based knowledge economy’, has appeared with growing frequency in national policy and strategy documents in many countries and economic regions in recent years, including those of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (e.g. OECD, 2006), the European Union (EU), the USA, Canada, Germany, Finland, Sweden and Australia (Staffas et al., 2013). There has been a dramatic increase in the use of the term ‘the bioeconomy’ and related terms in the scientific literature since 2005, with few references before 2000 (2013: 2755). Staffas et al. note that while the above terms are sometimes used interchangeably, they can designate different phenomenon, depending on the national context. For example, the ‘bio-based economy’ tends to focus on ‘raw material’, namely, natural and renewable biological resources, such as plants, animals or microbes that can be used or processed for food or energy, rather than fossil-based resources. The ‘bioeconomy’, on the other hand, tends to be used to designate biotechnology, life science and related technologies, that are part of an existing economy, but that may be exploited in new ways (Staffas et al., 2013: 2756). While in the past, countries tended to develop separate policies and strategies related to biotechnology, and bio-based products and industries, respectively, increasingly these applications are being collected under the umbrella of ‘bioeconomy’ (Staffas et al., 2013: 2752).

In the wake of the mapping of the human genome and the development of new genetic tests, and a series of purported breakthroughs in fields such as cloning, stem cell science and neuroscience in the early 2000s, many of the promises of ‘the bioeconomy’ pertain specifically to biomedical technologies. The development of these technologies is justified in terms of their potential to generate economic value and improve individual lives, especially through enhanced choice in health care. Reflecting this emphasis, in recent years, a number of governments and industries have sought to capitalise on their countries’ purported strengths in bioscience, biotechnology and biomedicine by marketing particular cities or regions as biotechnology hubs and/or ‘medical tourism’ destinations. For example, in February 2014 it was reported that the Victorian State government was ‘keen to market Melbourne as a healthcare destination’ (e.g. West, 2014) and in June 2014 it was announced that the same government was developing a strategy that ‘will position Victoria as an internationally-competitive developer of medical technology’ (Premier of Victoria, 2014).

Michel Foucault was one of the first to recognise the sociopolitical significance of bio-knowledge in modern economies, long before the emergence of the concept of the bioeconomy. In Foucault’s view, ‘bio-power’ has been inextricably linked to the development of capitalism; indeed, he argued, ‘the latter would not have been possible without the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and the adjustment of the phenomena of population to economic processes’ (1980: 141). The concept was integral to Foucault’s reconceptualization of power, involving an abandonment of the juridico-institutional model (‘sovereign power’) in favour of ‘an analysis of the concrete ways in which power penetrates subjects’ very bodies and forms of life’ (Agamben, 1998: 5). Foucault saw biopolitics as a new governmental rationality, namely a liberal governmentality, focused on the health, hygiene, birth rate, life expectancy and so on, of the population. He believed that studying liberalism was ‘the general framework of biopolitics’ (Foucault, 2010: 22 fn 3).

Recently, Rose (2007: 5) has offered an updated perspective on the workings of biopolitics in the age of advanced liberalism. In his view, the bioeconomy, along with a new form of capital, biocapital, constitute a ‘new economic space’ within contemporary biopolitics – namely, ‘economies of vitality’ – that are ‘reshaping medical and political perception and practice’. These economies are characterised by a focus on the generation of biovalue and the demand for shareholder value, along with ‘human value invested in the hope for cure and optimality’ (Rose, 2007: 5–6). As Rose observes, there has been a transformation in the relationship between old actors such as pharmaceutical companies and science, on the one hand, and stock markets, on the other. Further, new actors such as biotech start-ups and spin-outs have arisen and combined in various ways with forms of expertise and citizenship. Life has been reduced to a commoditised form and traded across time and space, and may serve many distinct objectives. In other words, biopolitics has become inextricably linked with bioeconomics (Rose, 2007: 7).

While Foucault’s work on bio-power/-politics and liberalism is seminal and has influenced the work of many sociologists, he could not have foreseen the extent to which promissory claims regarding the life sciences would come to shape thinking and action in advanced liberal societies (see e.g. van Est et al., 2014). As Rajan (2006) notes, the promissory statements of biocapital, as evident in marketing and public relations, are crucial to the process of capital accumulation. In seeking to understand the dynamics of promissory discourse in contemporary biopolitics, we have found the concept of performativity, as developed by writers such as Butler (2010), Callon (2007) and MacKenzie et al. (2007) in relation to economics and the operation of markets, to be useful. As both Butler and McKenzie et al. have argued, a word or gesture can be considered performative if it helps to bring about that which is described (Butler, 2010; MacKenzie et al., 2007). It designates the capacity of words and symbols to construct an entity or perform an identity. However, as MacKenzie argues, ‘performativity is not achieved by words alone’ (MacKenzie et al., 2007: 3). Performativity is an activity or a material operation and is ‘not just a property of statements’ (MacKenzie et al., 2007: 15). Thus, ‘Economics often seems abstract (to some of its proponents, as well as to its critics), yet it also articulates with, influences, is deployed in, and restructures concrete economies in all their messy materiality and their complex sociality’ (2007: 2). Further, as MacKenzie et al. argue, emphasising performativity ‘does not imply an evaluation, positive or negative, of the “effects” of the aspects of economics in question’ (2007: 5).

While economics does not (yet) offer an explicit theory of ‘the bioeconomy’, a tacit theory of its value-adding potential can be found in recent policy statements and the public pronouncements of the concept’s promoters. The latter include, notably, Juan Enriquez and Rodrigo Martinez, both co-founders of Harvard Business School’s Life Sciences Project, who originally defined the concept of the bioeconomy in a series of articles beginning in 1997. These life science business innovators position themselves as pioneer entrepreneurs who offer prophecies about bio-enabled futures and preach the virtues of life science research and investment for businesses and economies via books, blogs and videos and as advisers to and investors in companies that seek to exploit innovations in the life sciences (Biotechonomy, 2014; Bloomburg TV, 2010; Excel Venture Management, 2014; IDEO, 2014). In one post, Enriquez comments:

Biology is likely to become the greatest single driver of the global economy.… The life code is a lever and perhaps the most powerful instrument human beings have ever used. It will make the Industrial Revolution seem simple, even quaint. It will become the world’s dominant language, and all of us will have to be literate to thrive. (AusBiotech, 2014a)

In offering promissory statements such as this, promoters of ‘the bioeconomy’ are selling a vision of the future that demands particular actions in the present. In the above quote, it is interesting to note the use of metaphors such as ‘the life code’ used in the field of genomics, and analogies such as ‘the Industrial Revolution’ to help convey the purported far-reaching significance of what is envisaged. As indicated, citizens are being called upon to embrace and adapt to this imagined future (‘to be literate’) if they are to survive. Such promissory statements are common in discussions about new and emerging fields of bioscience, biotechnology and biomedicine, such as genetics, stem cell treatments, and ‘personalised medicine’ (see e.g. Brown, 2003, 2005; Hedgecoe, 2004).

Increasingly, the rhetoric of hope has been symbolically mobilised by the bio-industries, to market promising new technologies, such as stem cell treatments (Brown, 2005). The concept of the bioeconomy has been allied with what Thompson (2005) terms ‘promissory capital’. Stem cell research, genetics and regenerative medicine fall within the domain of promissory capital, where the promise and faith in future outcomes suffice in terms of generating value (Thompson, 2005). Being a term that is positively connoted, offering the promise of improved human health and economic sustainability, ‘the bioeconomy’ serves as a rallying point for diverse groups with sometimes-opposed political standpoints. ‘The bioeconomy’s’ broad, often ill-defined character makes it liable to appropriation by those pursuing often-divergent agendas, such as corporate interests and environmental activists.

Even though visions of ‘the bioeconomy’ are arguably overstated and obscure the asset base of the biotechnology sector (see Birch and Tyfield, 2013), its performative significance, in terms of generating value, cannot be underestimated. As Rajan argues:

To generate value in the present to make a certain kind of future possible, a vision of that future has to be sold, even if it is a vision that will never be realized. Excess, expenditure, exuberance, risk, and gambling can be generative because they can create that which is unanticipated, perhaps even unimagined. (2006: 115–16)

While futuristic discourse has the potential to generate value, it is by no means inevitable that it will, at least not in ways or to the extent envisaged. The performativity of ‘the bioeconomy’ may fail to produce that which is promised – or, as Butler (2010) puts it, ‘misfire’. As Butler notes, ‘it is only under certain kinds of conditions, and with no degree of predictability that theoretical models successfully bring into being the phenomenon they describe’ (2010: 152). Writing in the field of the sociology of expectations, Brown (2003) observes that technological promises and predictions often fail to be fulfilled; indeed, the process of technological innovation typically involves cycles of hype and disappointment, so that ‘early hopes are rarely proportionate to actual future results’ (2003: 3). This may have pernicious effects, as we explain later, with reference to stem cell science.

‘Innovation’

Because the presumed value of ‘the bioeconomy’ can only be realised if it attracts sufficient venture capital, biotech entrepreneurs and other purveyors of desired biotech futures have employed various rhetorical strategies to sell their promise, in particular emphasising the ‘innovative’, ‘translational’, value-adding significance of the life sciences. New fields of research such as genetics and stem cell science are promoted on the basis that the resulting knowledge will in time find its way ‘from bench top to bedside’, thereby contributing to biovalue and human value, especially through enhanced ‘consumer choice’ in health care. Given the demands of the share market, however, the expectation is that funding for basic research can only be justified if it is ‘translated’ into technologies in the not-too-distant future. Scientists recognise that they need to make strong optimistic claims regarding the significance of their research, especially in promising new areas such as genetics and stem cell science if they are to attract research funding and venture capital.

The biotechnology market, which includes drugs, medical devices, drug delivery systems, diagnostics and e-health, often struggles to attract venture capital because entrepreneurs see this market as involving high risk. It is considered high risk because technologies need to clear a series of expensive hurdles, often including undergoing clinical trials and then regulatory approval before they reach the market. At each stage stocks can rally and then fall if the outcome is not positive. As with other emerging technologies, appraising valuations of biotechnologies is notoriously difficult since price–earnings ratios are established in the absence of actual earnings (Poljak, 2014). As one financial writer recently explained, ‘sky-high P/Es [price–earnings ratios] are not uncommon in the tech sector because investors are looking for capital growth from share price appreciation, not necessarily fundamentals that will support a steady stream of dividends’ (Poljak, 2014: 26). Interestingly, in July 2014, the US Federal Reserve Chair, Janet Yellen singled out the technology and biotechnology sectors as ‘a source of concern’ on the basis of them ‘trading in bubble territory’, a statement that was interpreted by investors as a warning and resulted in an immediate fall in shares in the key technology index, the Nasdaq (Poljak, 2014: 26).

A major challenge confronting the biomedical technology sector is the recent decline in the number of drug approvals, notwithstanding burgeoning research investment by Big Pharma. Some commentators have heralded the end of the blockbuster era, which has been characterised by the production of expensive medicines available to only a small, relatively affluent population (Herper, 2011). Further, following the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis, ‘innovation capital’ raised by smaller biotechnology companies (i.e. with revenues less than $500 million) has remained at levels below pre-crisis years, and there has been a greater emphasis on matters of efficiency and demands posed by ‘the move towards evidence-based healthcare systems in which reimbursement is obtained by demonstrating how products add value and improve health outcomes’ (Ernst & Young, 2013: 1). Shareholders need to be convinced that technologies are worthy of investment; that is, are likely to generate profit and pay dividends. Governments, on the other hand, insist that technologies deliver economic benefits in terms of greater efficiencies as measured by a reduced incidence of illness and/or cheaper, more effective treatments.

In recent years, debates about the role of governments in shaping or ‘steering’ biotech and other technological ‘innovations’ have become common. It is often argued that ‘an efficiently functioning capitalist market’ positively affects the rate of innovation through ‘creative destruction’ and that ‘inappropriate’ government intervention can ‘stifle innovation’ (Nicholas, 2003). An implicit assumption is that ‘the market’ ‘dictates’ that old technologies will be superseded by newer, more efficient technologies. Indeed, it is often argued that ‘sustainable growth’ demands constant technological innovation; a process depicted as inexorable improvement (Friedel, 2007). Neoliberal rationality demands that governments leave ‘the market’ to decide ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in research and development. In this scenario, governments play a supportive rather than guiding role, creating infrastructure and offering financial incentives, and the like, to establish an environment that will ‘nurture innovation’. In reality, however, governments often provide considerable financial and institutional support to perceived potential ‘winners’, which are technologies believed most likely to contribute to economic growth and to addressing burgeoning health costs, especially those associated with the degenerative conditions of ageing populations.

Since 1980, the linear conception of innovation, involving relatively discrete stages beginning with basic research through to development and then diffusion, has been increasingly discredited (Callon, 2007; Mirowski, 2011). As Callon notes, the linear model of innovation has been superseded by a non-linear conceptual model, whereby innovation is viewed as an emergent, interactive activity involving feedback loops emanating from each stage (2007: 312–13). Thus, scientists and many other actors, including economists, business interests and policy makers, may shape technological change at different stages of the innovation cycle. The linear model presupposes an interventionist politics that has become less and less pertinent as neoliberalism has taken hold in many societies. The model is based upon the idea of a strong competence in ‘pure science’ as the basis for a vibrant manufacturing base. However, the retreat of nation-states from being primary patrons of science and science managers, and the increasing outsourcing of science to the private sector, has eroded belief in the linear model and implicitly ‘the overarching idea that science directly causes economic growth’ (Mirowski, 2011: 48). Further, the sequence of basic science to applied science to technology to commodity is disrupted by changes in economies from being manufacturing-based to service-based. Increasingly, ideas – and specifically ‘intellectual property’ – rather than commodities provide the basis for economies, and are subject to ownership and control (Mirowski, 2011: 8–11). However, as Mirowski indicates, citing Stiglitz (1999) a Nobel prize-winning economist, ‘standard economic theory has little to say about the efficiency of the knowledge-based economy’ (2011: 11).

This shift in many economies has affected bioscience and biotechnology as it has other areas of science and technology. At stake in ‘the bioeconomy’ is the generation, commodification and sale of ideas, especially through the patent system. In this economy, often what is being sold is not a treatment, device or diagnostic test, but rather the ownership of an idea/s, such as DNA sequences, that can be traded and used to generate surplus for reinvestment; for example, in new genetic tests. Many recent debates about ‘gene-mapping’ and genetic testing have focused on issues of patenting. This has been evident in legal cases concerning ownership of BRCA1 and 2, associated with a predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer (Adams, 2013), and earlier debates in health care about the costs associated with the patent-holder, Myriad Genetics’, monopolization of a unique technique (Direct Sequencing of the Gene) as opposed to alternative strategies (Sevilla, et al., 2003).

In a context in which ideas rather than material products become subject to ownership and underlie the production of value, promise, hope and expectation become critical to ‘innovation’. Optimism is a significant ingredient when ideas can be marketed and sold at any stage en route from ‘bench top to bedside’. According to ‘market sentiment’ it is often the case that start-up companies with ‘good ideas’ will be sold before ideas fully mature (i.e. result in a ‘technology’); in effect, selling a promise that may or may not generate a profit for the buyer in the future. If biotechnology entrepreneurs perceive that there is a market, such as a new age cohort or gender (the development of Viagra for ‘female sexual dysfunction’ being a case in point), then they may invent or modify an existing product to serve that market (the blue pill becomes the pink pill) (Moynihan and Cassels, 2005). A product approved for one use or group or dose or form of administration, may be used for a new one/s (‘off label’).

The dynamics of promise and optimism in relation to ‘the bioeconomy’ that we have described play out somewhat differently in different societies, and in different market sectors. In the following paragraphs we consider Australia’s experience in the biotech sector, especially the field of stem cell science, which, we suggest, illustrates well the significance of promissory discourse in regard to ‘the bioeconomy’ in shaping social and economic relations as well as the ever-present potential for performative failure or ‘misfire’.

The Australian experience

In recent years, Australian governments, like other governments, have been keen to exploit the perceived opportunities attached to ‘the bioeconomy’, with programs such as the recent (2007–13) Labor government’s National Enabling Technologies Strategy focusing on biotechnology, along with nanotechnology and other technologies, in order to ‘address major global and national challenges and increase industry productivity’ (Department of Industry, 2014). The subsequent Liberal government appears also to have at least implicitly embraced ‘the bioeconomy’, with its announcement in the May 2014 budget to launch a Medical Research Future Fund, which is predicted to grow to $20 billion, ‘the largest of its kind in the world’ (Australian Government, 2014). The fund is expected to distribute $1 billion per year, doubling the government’s commitment to medical research. However, at the time of writing (late 2014), the budget bill for a $7 Medicare co-payment which will support the Fund failed to pass the Senate, raising doubts about the proposal.

Many constituencies in Australia subscribe to ‘the bioeconomy’, including policy makers at federal and state levels, scientists, clinicians, patient groups, and small and large biotech and pharmaceutical industries that are pursuing often different and sometimes conflicting agendas. Despite these differences, all share optimism in regard to future innovations enabled by biotechnologies, especially as a result of their convergence with other technologies. Various government reports and biotech industry statements assert the value of investment in biotechnology, especially given Australia’s purported strengths and global competitive advantage in the field.

Many of these reports and statements arise within or pertain to Victoria, the pre-eminent centre for biotechnology research and development in Australia. In the introduction to Victoria’s Technology Plan for the Future – Biotechnology, published in 2011, the then Premier, Ted Ballieu, and the Minister for Technology, Gordon Rich-Phillips, outlined the potential of biotechnology, along with information and communication technology and ‘small technologies’, to ‘generat[e] higher levels of productivity, new business opportunities and economic growth’ (Department of Business and Innovation, 2011: 2). The report noted, ‘Biotechnology is a vitally important Victorian industry and an area of competitive advantage for the State, with the potential to make a major contribution to future economic growth and increased productivity (Department of Business and Innovation, 2011: 6)’.

In a web post, the Victorian-based AusBiotech, the national peak biotechnology body representing 3000 members in the life sciences, refers to ‘biotechnological innovation’ as ‘the foundation stone for our future’ and ‘a game changer’ that will ‘underpin our economy and provide solutions to intractable problems of human and animal diseases, climate change, fuel alternatives, food security – as well as improving our quality of life’ (AusBiotech, 2014a). In various forums, this organisation offers optimistic statements regarding the current status and future prospects of the life sciences. For example:

For our part, Australia is well on its way to achieving this vision of a successful bio-economy. The latest Scientific American, Worldview Scorecard 2013 ranked Australia number seven in biotechnology in the world up from number ten since last year.… Australia’s ASX-listed biotechnology companies are valued at more than $50 billion … a great contribution to the bio-economy.… Australian biotechnology boasts a raft of success stories and a world-class industry. (AusBiotech, 2014a)

The report goes on to note how ‘financiers’ choices’ had ‘shifted from mining to biotech companies’ and how ‘the PwC [Pricewaterhouse Coopers] Australian Life Sciences Index had consistently outperformed the NASDAQ Composite Index and the All Ordinaries since mid-2006’ (AusBiotech, 2014a).

The rhetoric of promise and optimism pervades the promotional materials and press statements of AusBiotech. In one article, published in 2013, the Chief Operating Officer of AusBiotech was reported as saying that the Australian biotech sector was ‘undergoing a renaissance’ and ‘was benefiting from a slowdown in investment in the resources industry’ (Australian Financial Review, 2013). Further, the article noted that ‘Australia has the sixth largest biotech and life sciences sector in the world after the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and France’, and that ‘Australia’s biotech sector was worth $32 billion, and its 350 to 400 companies were generating greater income from exports than the wine or auto-manufacturing sectors’ (Australian Financial Review, 2013).

AusBiotech has played a key role in promoting the benefits of biotechnology to policy makers, and in building links between scientists, the business sector, government and venture capital. To this end, it has hosted state-based and national events, including conferences, CEO luncheons and ‘investment summits’. In a report on a 2013 event, heralded as ‘Australia’s largest life science deal-making event to date’, it is noted that: ‘Over 300 senior level delegates from the life science community attended, 47% of which were qualified investors who came to discover and hand-pick promising biotech investment opportunities’ (AusBiotech, n.d.). Insight into AusBiotech’s extensive networks can be seen in the list of the event’s sponsors, including an assortment of biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, financial adviser, capital raising and investment organisations (e.g. Deloitte, Australian Security Exchange), and government bodies charged with responsibilities for industry and trade (UK Trade and Investment, AusIndustry), published at the back of the report. AusBiotech’s website lists sponsors such as market research analysts, publishers, specialist biopharmaceutical consultants, MedTRACK – a ‘biomedical corporate intelligence’ company – a conference and events organiser, and insurance and finance organizations (AusBiotech, 2014b).

The optimistic portrayals of the future of Australia’s biotechnology sector offered by Australian governments and AusBiotech stand in contrast to recent, more subdued or qualified independent assessments of the sector. In one report, published in 2014, by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, it is noted that the life sciences sector is highly varied and that ‘History proves that it doesn’t take too much for capital markets to lose faith in life science companies’ (PwC, 2014: 3). Further, it states that ‘the few life science companies which have listed in the last five years have not performed in accordance with initial expectations.’ And, that ‘a key challenge for the life sciences sector’ was ‘capturing and creating more value within Australia’ – a task that would require ‘attracting and maintaining talent, fostering partnerships to get the most out of previous success stories and building a supportive environment that allows the sector to compete beyond development and well into manufacture, commercialisation and distribution’ (PwC, 2014: 3). The report concluded by acknowledging that while the sector has the potential to replace ‘changing or dwindling industries’, this can only occur ‘through a coordinated effort, led by industry but supported by regulators and governments’ (PwC, 2014: 3).

A report on the global biotech sector, published by Deloitte the year before (2013), offered a more sombre assessment. In its Global Life Sciences Outlook, revealingly subtitled Optimism Tempered by Reality in a ‘New Normal’, Deloitte noted that,

A changing health care landscape, expiring patents and generic competition, pricing pressures, heightened regulatory scrutiny, expansion into emerging markets, increasing alliances and acquisitions, and a persistent economic slowdown are prompting global life sciences companies to adopt new business models designed to counter slowing sales growth and declining profitability, deliver better patient outcomes at lower cost, and position them for success in 2013 and beyond. (Deloitte, 2013: 1)

Writing almost a decade earlier, some years before the onset of the global financial crisis, Nightingale and Martin (2004) questioned the optimistic claims of the biotechnology sector, marshalling empirical evidence in relation to the pharmaceutical innovation process that undermines ‘the myth of the biotech revolution’. As these authors argue, many expectations are ‘widely optimistic and over-estimate the speed and extent of the impact of biotechnology’. The customary historical pattern for medicinal biotechnology innovation is a slow and incremental diffusion of technology (2004: 564).

As noted, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists see the biotechnology sector as involving high risk because technologies need to clear a series of expensive hurdles, including undergoing clinical trials and then regulatory approval before reaching the market. Because speculative investment in biotechnology is powered by optimism there is a tendency for this sector to, as Yellen puts it, above, ‘trade in bubble territory’. Given the risks, investors have thus far been cautious about investing in this sector. There are many examples of companies failing to live up to their initial promises; of seeing massive falls in their share price following a failed clinical trial. One is Prana Biotechnology, a Melbourne-based company focusing on treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, whose shares dropped 74 percent in a day in April, 2014, ‘after its drug failed to show any benefits for Alzheimer’s disease’ (Gardner, 2014: 24). Another is QRxPharma, a Sydney - and New Jersey (US) - based pharmaceutical company focusing on the development and commercialisation of new treatments for pain management, whose shares lost 90 percent of their value in one week, in May 2014, ‘after a key advisory committee to the US Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously against recommending its dual opioid painkiller Moxduo for approval’ (Urban, 2014). Other companies seeing considerable falls in their share value in 2014 include Mesoblast, a company with bases in Melbourne, New York and Singapore, which focuses on regenerative medicine products, and Acrux, another Melbourne-based pharmaceutical company (Australian Financial Review, 2014)

While recent Australian governments, like other governments, as noted, have embraced the neoliberal rhetoric that ‘innovation’ is ‘market driven’, they have recognised that the aforementioned problems confronting the biotech sector demand that governments play some role in nurturing the innovation process, for example, through creating ‘a competitive environment’. Notably, governments have sought to develop ‘intra-agency collaborations’ so as to develop a ‘critical mass’ of resources and expertise, exploit complementary strengths, and facilitate the communication of ideas. In Australia, a key mechanism of this kind is the so-called cluster development strategy that seeks to bring public research, undertaken principally by universities, and state and federal government laboratories and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), into closer connection (including co-location) with the private sector. Such cluster developments, which have become common in many countries since 1990, is seen as a means to generate urban and regional economic growth. In the theory of cluster development, competitive advantage is seen to derive from continual innovation and investment in resources and competences to enable a critical threshold that will provide a region with a sustainable economic advantage over other places (Porter, 1998).

In Melbourne, the so-called cluster development strategy has seen the university sector increasingly being coupled to the Regional Economic Strategy for Melbourne’s South East (2009–2030) (SGS Economics and Planning Pty Ltd, 2009). Both the University of Melbourne and Monash University belong to the gravitational centre of the so-called MSE (Melbourne South East) plan and its grid of alliances and patterns of association. Universities are seen as crucial organizations in the imagined emergent bioeconomy. As such, a new social contract between academia and society is being developed, inducing significant dynamics of change in the conditions of academic knowledge production. Monash University, like other so-called Group of Eight ‘research-intensive’ institutions, defines its research mission in terms of ‘industry engagement/partnership’, ‘impact’ and ‘spinoffs’. As Monash University articulates it, ‘research that addresses external needs, emerging through strong engagement with industry, government and community stakeholders’ (Monash University, 2011).

Monash University’s Research Strategic Plan, 2011–2015 makes extensive use of the rhetoric of engagement, translation and impact, revealing how economic utility has become central to the self-identity of the modern corporate university. The plan outlines the university’s commitment to ‘developing and maintaining external partnerships’, including ‘university–industry partnerships’, and its contribution to ‘the establishment of the South East Melbourne Innovation Precinct (SEMIP) as a recognized brand in Australia, and worldwide’ (Monash University, 2011: 18). While this plan does not specifically mention biotechnology, this is a significant field of research at Monash University, as it is at Melbourne University, and the university’s Research Strategic Plan signals an implicit strong commitment to biotechnology. This can be seen in its stated commitment to the SEMIP – a major locale for Australia’s biotechnology sector – ‘as a recognized brand in Australia, and worldwide’ and to its main campus, Clayton, becoming ‘a hub for the SEMIP, engaging its major facilities and inform[ing] its research and training’ (Monash University, 2011: 17–18).

As Kate Cregan (2001) argues, in Melbourne, the biotechnology sector has assimilated the speculative trend and symbolic value attached to the historical gold rush in the 19th century. The gold rush analogy, we believe, is apt, given the promises of riches attached to biotechnology innovation and the optimism that has surrounded many endeavours as a consequence. The analogy also conveys the boom–bust cycle that characterises speculative investment in promising fields such as global finance, mining and biotechnology, upon which many economic fortunes rely and in the past have been lost.

Stem cell research

It is in the field of stem cell research that promise and optimism in regard to the life sciences – and the potential for a ‘post-rush bust’ – is especially evident. This is a field characterised by its strong ‘translational ethos’ in that there are high expectations that research will find its way to clinical application in the not-too-distant future (Maienschein et al., 2008). Promise and optimism, and related expectation, have underpinned the development of local and national stem cell research initiatives and networks across Australia, such as the multidisciplinary New South Wales (NSW) Stem Cell Network, the Australasian Society for Stem Cell Research, and Stem Cells Australia. Researchers in Australia are also linked to regional and international networks, including Stem Cell Network Asia–Pacific, the International Society for Stem Cell Research and EuroStemCell. Significant new funding for stem cell science was delivered in 2002, with the government declaring it would invest $25 million in a new Centre for Stem Cells and Tissue Repair at Monash University in Melbourne (Dayton, 2002: 1779). This centre morphed into the Australian Stem Cell Centre (ASCC), an Australian Research Council-funded Biotechnology Centre of Excellence, led by nine leading Australian universities and research institutes and based at Monash University. The centre, headed by Dr Alan Trounsen, an IVF pioneer, aimed to nurture research collaborations and help scientists commercialise discoveries arising from stem cell biology (Dolgin, 2010). However, mirroring the global situation in stem cell science, the process of translation to treatments has proved slow (Gottweis, et al., 2009). Further, the ASCC, which was seen to hold such great promise, became mired in reports of infighting, poor management and financial difficulties, with corporate costs alone reportedly accounting for 38 percent of its spending (Trounsen, 2009). The centre eventually folded, on 30 June 2011, with few treatments to show for the investment that had been made, confirming Brown’s (2003) observation that technological expectations often fail to be fulfilled, resulting in disappointments.

Those searching the web for details of the ASCC are led to the website for the National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia, which serves a PR function, both encouraging donations to ‘enable scientists to continue their life saving research’, offering ‘prizes, news and opportunities for stem cell researchers’, and information on current stem cell research and trials, along with fact sheets and guides for teachers and students. While the ASCC may have failed to live up to its promises, optimism in stem cell science did not wane in the aftermath of its collapse. Rather, attention shifted to the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, launched in April 2009 with $153 million funding from the federal and Victorian governments and Monash University. Then Stem Cells Australia, launched in July 2011, received $21 million funding from an Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative, along with cash and in-kind contributions of $42.5 million from the lead institution, University of Melbourne (ARC, 2014).

Despite this considerable investment in stem cell research in Australia and other countries over a period of more than a decade, buoyed by the promises and high hopes for this field, few new clinically proven treatments have been developed. Available treatments are limited to the use of haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for blood and certain immune-related disorders (NHMRC, 2014), with the majority in the early stages of research. These treatments currently have low intake numbers and have yet to be proven as effective and safe (Trounsen et al., 2011). Significantly, in April 2014, it was announced that one of the major international centres for stem cell research, the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, had reached ‘a watershed moment’, after ten years of operation. The article reported that the agency, which had ‘handed out about $1.7 billion since it was created’, has thus far failed to deliver any cures and was faced with the challenge of developing ‘a “sustainability” plan that would finance it beyond 2017’ (Jensen, 2014). Elsewhere, it is reported that the funding for the Institute, which was enabled through bond sales, will be repaid with $3 billion in interest by Californian taxpayers. Further, it was noted that the Institute’s supporters were seeking a further $5 billion (and $5 billion in interest) in 2016, and that the funding approach ‘could be a model for moving technologies to patients when conventional funding sources are not interested’ (Hayden, 2014). It remains to be seen whether taxpayers will continue to support long-term expensive biotechnology ventures such as this. However, the experience thus far illustrates the powerful role that promise and optimism plays in shaping economic and social relations, even if not producing the outcomes that promoters of ‘the bioeconomy’ envisage.

Discussion and conclusions

As we have argued, promise and optimism play a crucial role in contemporary biopolitics, as evident in policies and public statements concerning ‘the bioeconomy’. ‘The bioeconomy’, we suggested, is performative in the sense of shaping actions and entities in the present, including assembling key actors and supportive networks, attracting venture capital and research funding, and guiding actions along certain avenues. However, we also noted that performativity is prone to failure or ‘misfire’ and thus to promises being unfulfilled. In revealing the performativity of ‘the bioeconomy’ and the factors that account for its failure, the article contributes to a growing body of sociological work exploring the dynamic role played by promissory discourse in the life science field (e.g. Brown, 2003, 2005; Hedgecoe and Martin, 2003; Horst, 2007; Nightingale and Martin, 2004; Martin et al., 2012)

We suggest that the promise and optimism that underpins investment, research and development in the contemporary life sciences carries both opportunities and dangers. Opportunities lie in harnessing such promise and optimism to enhance the capacity of citizens to engage in debates about the implications of envisaged technologies, thereby advancing so-called anticipatory governance (Guston, 2014). As Guston argues, most governing activities tend to have a single defined, yet often unarticulated, relationship to the future (e.g. precautionary, predictive or deterministic), which shapes matters of concern. Anticipatory governance approaches, on the other hand, leave the relationship between the governing decision and the quality of knowledge undetermined and in a productive tension (Guston, 2014). Promissory statements and optimistic portrayals of future technologies may be used to explore diverse normative scenarios that encourage exchange among publics and those who generally frame and set the agenda for research. Such statements and portrayals may assist in encouraging reflection on alternative futures, where issues of value are debated rather than assumed at the outset of research programs and before the occurrence of technological ‘lock in’ and ‘path dependency’, whereby the decisions one faces are limited by earlier decisions.

Optimism, on the other hand, especially if excessive, carries dangers for public trust in science and future speculative investment in fields that may bring benefits for whole populations. Recent widely reported instances of malpractice in the field of stem cell science – including the Hwang case in South Korea involving fraud (Kitzinger, 2008) and, more recently, the Haruko Obokata case in Japan, involving the publication of falsified content in an article reporting research findings on so-called STAP (Stimulus-triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency) (Cook, 2014) and the subsequent apparent suicide of the co-author, Yoshiki Sasai (Japan Times, 2014) – illustrate that the pressures on researchers generated by excessive optimism and expectations may shape behaviours in ways that ultimately bring discredit to science, and potentially undermine confidence in the claims of scientists and ruin lives. Excessive optimism may also have deleterious consequences ‘downstream’, in leading patients to submit themselves to treatments that are yet to be clinically proven and hence are potentially harmful and financially exploitative. An early market for stem cell treatments, involving patients travelling abroad to undertake stem cell treatments that are clinically unproven (so-called stem cell tourism) has emerged, evidently exploiting the high hopes surrounding this field (Petersen et al., 2014). In recent years, science organisations and regulators have expressed concerns that patients seeking such treatments may suffer physical and financial harm (ISSCR, 2014; NHMRC, 2014). These concerns are not unfounded, given recent reports of patients developing lesions and tumours (e.g. Amariglio et al., 2009; Nagy and Quaggin, 2010; Thirabanjasak, et al., 2010) and some deaths (Crisostomo, 2014; Mendick and Hall, 2011; Pepper, 2012) following stem cell treatments.

The risks posed by heightened optimism and unfulfilled promise go beyond those we have described. Such optimism contributes to the skewing of funding priorities away from areas requiring investment and action towards fields of research that, in all likelihood, will not deliver what is promised, resulting in wasted resources while reinforcing the privatisation of science and the individualisation of health. Increasing investment in the promissory life sciences, including the harnessing of the publicly funded resources of universities and other publicly funded research institutions, means that fewer resources are available for social research and policy initiatives in areas of pressing need. Funding research and technologies that potentially benefit some – for example, the development of stem cell treatments for relatively wealthy (and, in some cases, relatively healthy) patients – diverts resources away from research and programs that could benefit many people. Collectively these bio-political outcomes and dynamics problematise the purported benefits of research and amount to a significant unfulfilled promise. For the majority of citizens, the benefits of ‘capitalising hope’ (Martin et al., 2012) are doubtful. Under increasingly privatised health care systems and the delivery of patent-protected treatments, health care costs will no doubt rise and relatively few patients will be able to afford the expensive personalised treatments, should they materialise.

In short, there are good reasons for caution in relation to the promises and optimism attached to ‘the bioeconomy’. While promise and optimism would seem to be intrinsic to the dynamics of contemporary life science research and development, one should not ignore the attendant dangers. History shows that, in economies, optimism may quickly turn to pessimism, transforming a boom into a bust. This is no less the case with the life sciences. Those who invest heavily in ‘the bioeconomy’ on the promise of future wealth and wellbeing would be well advised to hedge their bets.