The Need of Venture Capital Investors in Life Sciences Clusters: a Comparison between Romania and Germany

This article aims to investigate the role of investors in the development of clusters. Previous studies validated that investors are an essential category of actors for the clustered companies, alongside the specialized suppliers, sophisticated buyers, regulatory authorities, or education institutions. Although most previous studies have focused on understanding the mechanisms of such structures and subsequent recommendations, the topic of financing opportunities was neglected. Therefore, based on the previous successful experience of other clusters, the question raised is whether venture capital can help clustered companies. For such an investigation, two countries were analyzed as case studies, based on the venture capital invested in the last years. Life sciences have been selected due to the larger need for funding the research and development activities, compared with other industries. As expected, the development of analyzed clusters was influenced by the availability of local resources; but in the case of Germany, the need of private investors has been confirmed by the local authorities since the first cluster policy.