Understanding Research, Science and Technology Parks Global Best Practices: Report of a Symposium (2009) / Chapter Skim
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Introduction: Research Parks in the 21st Century
Introduction: Research Parks in the 21st Century
Pages 7-38
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For example, as Senator Bingaman noted in his keynote remarks at The first research park was established in Menlo Park, California, in 1948. Early successful parks, established in the 1950s and early 1960s, include the Stanford Industrial Park (est.
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I would like to see the government provide more assistance to states to make research parks a priority." Senator Jeff Bingaman, Keynote remarks at the 2008 National Academies conference on S&T Research Parks the National Academies conference that are summarized in this volume, research parks focused on software design in India have supported that nation's emergence as a global leader in software design and services. Yet, while investments by the world's leading nations in research parks reflects an appreciation of their capacity to spur knowledge-based growth and enhance technological competitiveness through innovation, this potential of research parks appears to be less well understood by policymakers and the public in the United States. To better understand the role that research parks can play as sources of innovation, regional growth, and national competitiveness for the United States and to document recent developments in the growth of research parks around the world, the National Academies' Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP)
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The conference presentations demonstrated the range of objectives and the substantial differences in scope and scale of activity characterizing research parks around the world, while also identifying common challenges. Addressing the 21st Century Innovation Challenge The global proliferation of research parks reflects the recognition by national and regional governments that future economic growth and competitiveness lies in developing a robust knowledge economy.
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By stimulating cooperative research and development among industry, government, and universities, partnerships can play an instrumental role in introducing new technologies to the market. A recent review by the National Academies of best practices among U.S. innovation partnerships shows that cooperative research and development among industry, universities, National Academy of Sciences/National Academy of Engineering/Institute of Medicine, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2007.
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2-3. and government laboratories can work if properly designed, effectively led, and adequately funded. The growing importance of collaboration in bringing research to the market and the positive role of federal support for innovative small companies is documented in a recent independent study of the changes in the United States innovation landscape over the past four decades.10 Research parks are a type of public-private partnership that "fosters knowledge flows -- often between park firms and universities and among park firms -- and National Research Council Committee led by Gordon Moore concluded that "Public-private A partnerships, involving cooperative research and development activities among industry, government laboratories, and universities, can play an instrumental role in accelerating the development of new technologies from idea to market." See National Research Council, Government-Industry Partnerships for the Development of New Technologies: Summary Report, Charles W
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Box C Parks as a Nexus of Innovation "Research Parks appear to be an excellent place to cross the Valley of Death between invention and the marketplace." Dr. Lawrence Schuette, Office of Naval Research Understanding Research Parks Alternatively referred to as research parks, science parks, technology parks, technopoles, science centers, business innovation centers, and centers for advanced technology, there appears to be no singular characterization of a research park.14 The International Association of Science Parks defines a Science Park as 11 See Albert N
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Their physical location can range from an exclusively urban settings -- such as Singapore's emerging Biopolis or the IIT-Madras Research Park in Chennai, India -- to more spread out facilities -- such as the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina -- or even to very large sites like the Zhongguancun and Zhangjiang Science Parks in China. In practice, the terms "science park" and "technopole" are used most commonly in Europe, the term "technology park" is more prevalent in Asia, while the term "research park" is preferred in the United States and Canada.16 We use the term "research park" in this paper.
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:45-62, 1997. In addition to infrastructure investments in buildings and equipment and the employment of researchers and engineers, research parks often house incubation programs to provide resources that enhance the founding of new technology-based firms, although the effectiveness of these incubation programs vary.
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University Research Parks Professors Albert Link and John Scott define a university research park as a "cluster of technology-based organizations that locate on or near a university campus in order to benefit from the university's knowledge base and ongoing research. The university not only transfers knowledge but expects to develop knowledge more effectively given the association with the tenants in the research
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University Research Parks," Journal of Productivity Analysis 25(1)
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Some of these agencies conduct classified research, and many research universities have policies prohibiting classified research on campus, but not at affiliated research parks.
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Promoting Research Collaboration In his conference keynote, President James Barker of Clemson University emphasized the role that research parks can play in promoting collaboration. There will always be "eureka moments" in the labs where scientists work, he said, but we are now discovering that collaboration can be a tremendous competitive advantage.
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(See Box G.) Laboratory Research Parks Like universities, national laboratories are also repositories of knowledge and scientific aptitude and thus represent promising nuclei for the growth of innovation clusters.
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Stulen emphasized that expertise and infrastructure are not sufficient to ensure the success of a research park. Successful laboratory-based parks also require one or more high-level champions, people who care and have the ability to direct resources continuously to the park.
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government, a NASA-approved business plan, and an approved environmental plan." The initial concept of the NASA Ames Park was reviewed by the National Academies' STEP Board in 1999.28 The park has made great progress since then, exceeding expectations and enacting NASA's plans with remarkable effectiveness. Accelerating Cancer Research at NCI-Frederick In his conference presentation, Director John Niederhuber of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)
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Research Parks and Economic Growth In addition to their role in advancing the research and commercialization missions of universities and national laboratories, research parks are widely seen as catalysts for the development of innovative clusters that support rapid economic growth.30 Developing Clusters of Innovation The observation that firms tend to group together to profit from shared expertise and services and the development of mutual trust has encouraged interest in fostering industry clusters to enhance regional development. Examining industrial clusters from the perspective of business strategy, Professor Michael Porter has pointed out that "the enduring competitive advantages in a global economy lie 29 Established in 1971 by President Nixon, NCI-Frederick was established as a rapid response site to develop new technologies to support the "War on Cancer." It was given FFRDC status in 1975, which allows NCI to establish contractual relationships in streamlined fashion.
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In other cases (e.g., Silicon Valley) multiple private industries interacting with a major university, and irrigated with substantial and sustained federal funding, created powerful developmental synergies.33 In contrast to the relatively spontaneous emergence of these innovation clusters, a third approach to the development of innovation clusters is through the deliberate creation of research parks.34 The co-location of creative activity within the concentrated geographical area of a research park can help create a "community of innovation" needed to transfer new ideas from universities and national laboratories to the marketplace.35 Today, successfully created innovation clusters, such as North Carolina's Research Triangle, are being emulated around the world, often on a larger scale.
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Jane Davies of MSP noted that representatives of Manchester government, the university, and the commercial sector, drew specifically on the model of Research Triangle Park in proposing a new science park for their city, raising an initial capital investment of 210,000 Pounds. Indeed, North Carolina's Research Triangle Park is seen widely as a successful example of how a research park can reverse the fortunes of a region faced with economic decline and a shrinking job base due to decreasing manufacturing concentrations.36 Describing the long-term economic impact of the Research Triangle Park on the regional economy, Mr.
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China's Support for Parks China is frequently seen as one of the foremost practitioners of the research parks strategy for economic and regional development. China's large science and technology industrial parks symbolize that nation's strong determination to grow and become internationally competitive through significant national and regional investments in science-based economic development.38 A central theme of China's recent Five Year Plans has economic development driven by technological progress, and large-scale research parks are a widely used mechanism to carry out this goal.39 (See Figure 1.)
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"Average North American Research Park" data are from "Characteristics and Trends in North American Research Parks: 21st Century Directions," commissioned by AURP and Intro Figure J-1 prepared by Battelle, October 2007; "Average IASP Member Park" data are from the R01413 International Association of Science Parks annual survey, published in the 2005-2006 International Association of Science Parks directory. editable NOTE: The scale of China's investments in research parks may be comparable to the mas sive efforts undertaken in the United States during the Cold War in building national labo ratories.
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While China provides a remarkable example of state support for research parks as a tool to promote national targets in technological progress, other nations are also providing significant support for their research parks. At the conference, representatives from several countries, including Singapore, France, and Mexico described major efforts to create and support research parks as a part of their nation's growth and development strategies.
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The park has attracted almost 10,000 "sea turtles" (Chinese scientists who return home after acquiring skills abroad) that have set up 4,200 companies in Zhongguancun Science Park.
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Speaking at the conference, Dr. David Holden of Minatec noted that the development of a research park in Grenoble has benefitted from a substantial 3.2-billion-Euro investment from the French government, with the local government adding about 150 million Euro, most of it to pay for infrastructure, such as highways and access roads.
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Jaime Parada of Mexico's Research and Innovation Technology Park reported that a new research park is unfolding in Monterrey. The 175 acre research park draws on the dynamic industrial base of the city of Monterrey, which produces 11 percent of Mexico's manufacturing goods, equivalent to US$12.1 billion.
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Talented and motivated individuals and teams in the private sector are needed to commercialize the knowledge generated.46 If the benefits of a successful park are to be realized over the long term, a critical combination of these factors must be present, although they are not sufficient to ensure success. Drawing on the experience of the Research Triangle Park, widely seen as a successful research park, Dr.
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Experimentation and Adaptability Dr. McMahan also noted that the North Carolina Board of Science and Technology experimented with organizational innovations, many of which have proved useful and have since served as models for newer research parks.
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49 Fora review of the empirical literature on research parks, see Albert N Link, "Research, Science, and Technology Parks: An Overview of the Academic Literature," in this volume.
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But both the literature and our data from interviews with park developers, elected officials, university administrators, business leaders, and others confirm the existence of other goals, including technology transfer, land development, and enhancement of the research opportunities and capacities of affiliated universities."50 Another limitation arises from the absence of a systematic framework to under stand the dynamic interactions among the various stakeholders and participants of a research park and how the nature of these interactions affects behavior and hence outcomes. As Professors Phillip Phan, Donald Siegel, and Mike Wright have observed in their recent review of the literature, there is a failure to understand the dynamic nature of research parks as well as that of the companies located on them.51 Acknowledging this point, Dr.
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See, for example, the remarks of Ilona Vaas of the Hungarian National Office for Research and Technology in the Proceedings section of this volume. 55 See, for example, the presentation by Yena Lim on Singapore's initiatives and by Zhu Shen on China's significant investments in research parks in the Proceedings section of this volume.
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• Technological development at many research parks is increasingly inte grated with university research, with faculty working with private firms and firms renting laboratories and incubator space in universities. • Beyond research universities, community colleges and regional technical schools are increasingly participating in research parks.
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Given that the tenure of these leaders, especially elected officials, is short relative to the life of a research park, bridging institutions, such as the North Carolina Board of Science and Technology, play an important role in sustaining support for research parks over the long run. 58 See National Research Council, A Review of the New Initiatives at the NASA Ames Research Center, op.
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Time and patience are important, she observed, "but we have heard an undercurrent of urgency from essentially all of the participants." She noted further that sovereign states have decided to front-load economic development and to lean on their state-supported universities to contribute to national economic development of new technology-based companies. Research parks are clearly a key element of economic development today, and we need to learn from others and adopt and adapt those lessons to the United States, just as other countries are adapting what they see as positive lessons from the U.S.
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