Access to talent is the biggest factor in where biotechs decide to locate their operations, according to a survey released Friday by several state entities and the CURE biotech industry association.
Connecticut Innovations, the Department of Economic and Community Development, and CURE surveyed 81 attendees at the BIO International Convention in Philadelphia last week, where state and CURE officials sought to lure companies to Connecticut.
The survey revealed that 43 percent of companies saw access to talent as the top consideration for location decisions, followed by access to partners (32 percent) and access to funding (10 percent).
The results come a day after Bristol-Myers Squibb indicated it would shutter its Wallingford facility in 2018, relocating 200 workers to a new facility in Boston’s biotech hub, Kendall Square.
According to CURE’s website, BMS was an original founder of the association in the 1980s, along with Pfizer, which has cut or relocated more than 1,000 jobs from its eastern Connecticut operations since 2011.
The survey of biotechs also found that 40 percent feel personalized medicine will be the largest growth area over the next decade, and that early-stage funding is the greatest challenge for the industry, followed by talent acquisition and federal funding.
