Australia ranks fourth on biotech scorecard

Scientific American Worldview has released its latest scorecard, which measures biotechnology innovation around the world.

The scorecard ranks countries’ biotech performance across seven categories - productivity, intellectual property protection, intensity, enterprise support, education/workforce, foundations, and policy and stability - with the results normalised on a scale of 0 to 10 and an overall score between 0 and 50.

Australia ranked extremely well on the scorecard, with an overall score of 28.3. This resulted in a jump from seventh position last year to fourth this year. Significantly, Scientific American Worldview noted that if the ranking was based purely on productivity, we would jump again to second place.

Furthermore, we joined the top positions across several areas, including the following:

• Greatest public company revenues (US, UK, Australia)
• Most public companies (US, Australia, Canada)
• Greatest public company market cap (US, Australia, UK)
• Most public company employees (US, Australia, France)
• Best brain gain - share of global graduate students (US, UK, Australia)
• Largest public markets for biotechnology (US, Australia, UK)
• Best growth in biotechnology public markets (US, Australia)

The authors suggest that Australia’s biotech market is undergoing a resurgence, with our market capitalisation reaching an all-time high due to recent growth. With other countries experiencing mixed results, Australia looks to be placed in a strong position.

The scorecard can be downloaded here.