The on-stands issue of Fast Company includes a “Fast Cities” feature, in which 30 urban centers are acknowledged as good places to start and run businesses. Broken down by category, the list highlights four “Startup Hubs,” including Madison, WI, which is plugged for all it has to offer life sciences entrepreneurs.
Fast Company calls Madison the “biotech bastion of the breadbasket.” The magazine says, “The University of Wisconsin employs about 50 stem-cell researchers, has one of the top tech-transfer programs in the nation, and is sinking $150 million in state and private money into its Institutes of Discovery. That has helped seed more than 100 life-sciences firms in surrounding Dane County.”
Oh, and by the way, says Fast Company, “The University of Wisconsin at Madison spends more on R&D than Stanford, MIT, or Harvard.”
Noted Madison-based companies include Promega, Third Wave Technologies and EMD Biosciences.
Also making the Startup Hub list is Tuscon, AZ, which Fast Company says has a “booming” life sciences industry.