Florida Officials says the sunshine state is becoming a destination for the life sciences industry. The state is seeing an emergence in areas like biotech and pharmaceutical companies.
Enterprise Florida President Gray Swoope gave the governor and his cabinet an update Tuesday on his agency’s efforts to grow jobs. He said Florida ranks second now for growth in life sciences.
“We had one of the venture capital funds just locate in the innovation hub there in Gainsville as well, choosing not only to do Florida, but also, from a venture capital standpoint that they feel the market is right now for them to invest in some of our life science emerging companies. So we really feel good about the growth that’s going on in that area," Swoope said.
He said right now Enterprise Florida is working to attract a number of jobs to the state, saying it’s a lot like working as a salesman.
“It’s like sales. You have to have opportunity to follow up and what we see of active projects that have real projects that are competing for projects today, there’s 309 of those in our pipeline today. Space Florida is also working a 105 active projects and its our goal to win as many of those as we can in that competitive jobs sector," Swoope said.
Swoope said he’s also working with local governments to streamline the process for a business to move in. And Governor Rick Scott reminded citizens they can help out too. He pointed to an example in Gainesville.
“A professor at UF responded to an e-mail. The company was not even thinking about coming to Florida, so everybody in the state can have an impact. Everybody in the state has got a relationship. So we all have, everybody in this room can have an impact," Scott said.
Scott is talking about a company called Mindtree, an information technology consulting company, that’s bringing 400 jobs to the state. And the governor said there’s the possibility that the company could potentially create 3,000 jobs.
