Many thanks to the people and businesses that made this video possible, including the Flinn Foundation, NAU Innovations, the City of Flagstaff and videographer Victor Vongspath, as well as all the participants who appeared.
The Bioscience Roadmap is a long-term strategic plan originally commissioned by the Flinn Foundation in 2002 and updated in 2014 with the goal of making Arizona globally competitive and a national leader in the bioscience sector by 2025.
We are well on our way to making those goals a reality, according to Eve Ross, the chair of the Bioscience Roadmap’s Steering Committee and a former executive at W.L. Gore. “As we near the 20-year mark in our bioscience initiative, it’s eye-opening to look at how we’ve developed into a robust industry cluster,” she said.
For example, since the initiative began in 2002, the state’s bioscience and health industry has grown by more than 800 companies and 55,000 jobs. These jobs typically pay one-third more than the average private-sector position. Meanwhile, research funding and venture capital for new bioscience firms has increased dramatically. In 2019, the last year figures are available, venture capital funding for bioscience firms hit a record of $198 million, even as funding nationally declined.
Keeping this pace going as we rebuild our post-pandemic economy is one of the many goals of the Economic Collaborative of Northern Arizona. We are fortunate to have a rich infrastructure in place capable of fostering developments in this field, including a supportive and invested local government, a top-notch research university, the Moonshot at NACET entrepreneurial program and a wide array of innovative businesses that are leading the way in the bioscience sector.