Lawmakers in Florida have opted against pumping a fresh $25 million into its Innovation Incentive Fund, one of the most singularly successful economic development programs in the world. The Fund has shelled out $450 million in just two years, funding an astonishing range of programs: a genomics institute at the University of Miami, satellite campuses for the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, bringing SRI International to Tampa, luring the Max Planck Society as well as the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies and the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute.
There has been some growing resentment that the fund is too focused on biotechnology. But the research groups that have been wooed with a combination of state and local cash say that unique focus will pay off with a new generation of biotech companies that will grow up in the Sunshine state.
- read the story in the Miami Herald
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