In page 4 below in Section 2.2, we added a brief explanation of the “initial” (now “basic”) conditions of clusters. There we suggested that they comprise various regional characteristics and that also R8 scientific or industrial focus may differ across clusters within life science or biotechnology.
Furthermore, ‘initial conditions’ fail to capture the complexity of clusters if they are reduced to a dichotomy of private vs. public sector dominance. Even when the industry (biotechnology) is held constant, clusters differ in a number of ways, esp. regarding their specialisation within biotechnology, their maturity, size (number of firms and employee) and firm size structure.