“I am convinced that the next Silicon Valley...will happen in the biomedical area, will happen in the technology and in the products that relate to extending and improving the quality of human life,” Summers says.

Summers has primarily described his vision for Silicon Valley as an effort to strengthen Harvard’s contribution to bioscience.

The boom will happen “where the most knowledge resides and where the best systems for its application exist. I believe that can be, should be, and will be here in the Boston area,” Summers says.

Harvard, and in addition, Boston, already has a competitive advantage in attracting the most brilliant minds and producing biosciences’ most important discoveries, administrators say. The Longwood Medical Area hosts many of the nation’s premier hospital and biomedical research facilities.

But Summers and others say Harvard will need to press to stay ahead. The medical school is in the process of building an enormous new research building to be shared between basic scientists at the school itself and faculty at the affiliated hospitals.

FAS will also need to continue to expand, if its biological sciences are to remain strong.

But science at Harvard is going to need to do more than just get bigger, Summers says.

Science research is transforming “from an effort that is largely reductionist in focusing on individual reactions within individual cells, to a process that is far more systemic...from a micro process to a macro understanding,” Summers explains.

Summers says that more and more, knowledge and information does not respect disciplinary barriers.

As a result, Provost Steven E. Hyman says, Harvard needs to do more to foster collaboration between departments and between its schools.

“I don’t want to undercut the autonomy of the schools, but I don’t want there to be intellectual silos,” Hyman says. “One of the things I will be working on is initiating more ways to create collaboration in the life sciences.”

Harvard has for several years focused on fostering this type of collaboration. Hyman and other cite the recently established Bauer Center for Genomic Research and a center for neuroscience research as fledgling attempts to bring people together across disciplines.

But Hyman and Summers agree that Harvard should be going farther. The fact that there are essentially two biochemistry departments, one at FAS and another at the Medical School, is oft-cited as a sign of the need for greater coordination.

Hyman hopes to push into “unexplored synergies” between FAS, the Medical School and the School of Public Health. And the possibility of a greater role for FAS’ Division of Engineering and Applied Science in biological science programs should be investigated, he says.

The Promised Land