Rethinking Value and Expectations in the Health Bioeconomy

Abstract

In this book, I have proposed a new approach to exploring the enactment of value in the context of an emergent health bioeconomy. Specifically, I have attempted to provide a broad and systemic analysis of the constitutive elements and key drivers of what is a complex health innovation ecosystem, with multiple stakeholders each operating with different notional ideas of the benefits, limitations, and long-term value (beyond merely the economic) of various Research and Development configurations and options. I have also tried to think through how different expectations are managed, and new organizational routines and practices made to work, as “new biology” promises to deliver radically new therapeutic paradigms, but is confronted with a confluence of technological, regulatory, and social challenges. By tracing the evolution of new biology and the emergence of what we might call a health bioeconomy in the twenty-first century, I have been able to investigate and critically reflect on how the institutional and organizational landscape for health R&D, particularly within Europe and the United States, has undergone a profound transformation as a result of the emergence of new science and technology options, and multiple types of value and valuation practices.