The clusters and the cluster initiatives of the Russian biopharmaceutical industry: Identifi cation, structure, and geography

Abstract

Th e biopharmaceutical industry has always been a highly concentrated sector of the economy. Th is industry became a matter of great interest in Russia when import-substituting programmes grew in relevance. Th e implementation of the Pharma-2020 strategy, along with the stable indicators of the economic growth across the industry, facilitated the creation of cluster initiatives — both innovative and innovative local ones — in certain regions of the Russian Federation. A necessary condition for the creation of cluster initiatives is the existence of a high industrial concentration in a rather limited area. Th e paper proposes a methodology that can be used to check whether cluster initiatives match geographical clusters; it also demonstrates how this methodology can be applied to the cluster initiatives created in Russia between 2008 and 2018 in order to verify how they match the geographical clusters established on the basis of spatial indices of industrial concentration. We established that out of twenty-four biopharmaceutical clusters considered, eight clusters were created in areas where the relevant industry is not geographically concentrated. We found regions in which geographical concentration of the biopharmaceutical industry is rather high, although regional governments did not launch cluster initiatives of the related industries. We analyzed the structure of the biopharmaceutical cluster initiatives and revealed that the number of participants is insuffi cient; the share of industrial plants is low; the industry is not specialized enough; small and medium plants are involved only at an average level.