Debate: Scaling life sciences impact in the EU—Building sustainable management and public governance capacity

Recently, the European Commission launched the opportunity for various public and private stakeholders in the European life science ecosystem to provide evidence and reflections on how the European Union (EU) can maintain its leading position in life sciences. The EU ‘is well placed to nurture its economy with knowledge, know-how, and innovation. However, it has been losing ground to its main global competitors’ (European Commission, Citation2025). In the call, the Commission stresses the need for a multi-disciplinary strategy to achieve its goals: ‘[1] boost competitiveness and prosperity, [2] accelerate the green and digital transitions, [3] create new jobs, [4] reduce dependencies on external sources’ (European Commission, Citation2025). The initial phase of the Commission’s strategy development process contains a ‘call for evidence’ in which stakeholders from the life science ecosystem can provide their insights on the development of a strategy for European life sciences. The call for evidence outlines three main issues that hamper the further development of the European life sciences industry: (1) Limited market uptake and commercialization; (2) Access to finance; and (3) Evolving skills needs (European Commission, Citation2025). Multiple reasons can be identified from the scientific literature on what causes these problems and/or how they should be dealt with (Baycan & Stough, Citation2013; Biggs et al., Citation2021; Campbell et al., Citation2004; Crispeels et al., Citation2018; Feldman, Citation2000). In this debate article, we put forward the need for more and stronger management and governance competencies to deal with the development, consolidation, and growth of sustainable capacity for life sciences (Crispeels et al., Citation2009, Citation2015; Markman et al., Citation2008). Concretely, many initiatives that already exist on life science competencies focus on the valuable and necessary operational and technical skills that are central in life sciences. However, when talking about the need for more and stronger management and governance competencies, strategic and tactical competencies need to be strengthened on a large and interdisciplinary scale beyond, in addition to, and together with, operational and technical life science skills.