Federal officials have begun inviting the biotech industry to write its own prescription for economic success with a new request for concrete steps to include in a new “National Bioeconomy Blueprint.”

The Blueprint, announced by President Barrack Obama on September 16, will detail Administration-wide steps to harness biological research innovations to address national challenges in health, food, energy, and the environment while creating high-wage, high-skill jobs.

To get there, the chief architects on the project in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy first want ideas. So until December 6 it is soliciting everything from moon-shot scale goals, called “grand challenges,” to input on R&D; funding priorities, regulatory reforms, and public-private partnerships.

By January 2012 Obama wants to have in hand a plan that speeds commercialization, opens new markets, reduces regulatory and financial burdens on innovators, and enhances workforce training for scientists and engineers.

“We are very supportive of the President’s stated commitment to reduce unnecessary regulation and for investment in research and development, as well as the creation of new tools for small companies with promising science,” says Jim Greenwood, president and CEO of the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

BIO issued its own prescription in June, detailing among other things suggestions for how to make the biotechnology sector more attractive to investors. (See The Burrill Report Podcast: Pushing Policies in a Changed Washington )

Some likely suggestions include requests for the Administration to back off plans to trim the data exclusivity period for brand name biologics beginning in 2012, wishes for better funding in key Health and Human Services agencies like NIH and FDA, and a lighter hand in regulation. But more novel ideas might prove just as important, including those responding to the government’s request for alternatives to existing private-sector models for financing entrepreneurial bioeconomy firms and defining the government’s role in pre-competitive collaborations.

Responses to the government’s request for information will be posted on the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s web site.