The San Francisco Bay Area has better weather. North Carolina’s Research Triangle has lower costs. San Diego has even better weather than San Francisco.

These regions, all centers of biotechnology, are among Boston’s fiercest competitors for life sciences investment, companies, and jobs, offering advantages that can’t be matched in a cold-weather, high-cost city. But Boston has nonetheless emerged as the leader in the industry, overcoming its natural disadvantages with a concoction of brains, money, and risk-taking that one analyst described simply as “magic.”