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Survey of Science Parks highlights global trends and best practice
"A Science or Technology Park is a space, physical or cybernetic, managed by a specialised professional team that provides value-added services, whose main aim is to increase the competitiveness of its region or territory of influence by stimulating a culture of quality and innovation among its associated businesses and knowledge-based institutions, organising the transfer of knowledge and technology from its sources to companies and to the market place, and by actively fostering the creation of new and sustainable innovation-based companies through incubation and spin-off processes." - Luis Sanz, 3 Oct 2001
A survey to gather information about the fast growing phenomenon of Science and Technology Parks worldwide, conducted by the International Association of Science Parks (IASP) in 2002, highlighted interesting trends and best practices. Survey director Luis Sanz, Director General of the IASP, of which The Innovation Hub is the only African full member, visited South Africa as a guest of Blue IQ in October last year and shared some insights. In some instances, additional information from European Science Parks has been added to the statistics to provide interesting comparative elements.
Steep escalation in the creation of Science and Technology Parks
The rate at which STPs have been, and are being, established has increased dramatically since the early 1980s. While 30% of Parks were established in the eighties and 48% in the nineties, 18% of the current 268 STPs (2002) have been launched in the last three years, which is an indication that this is a growing trend that will continue.
Location - an urban phenomenon
Globally, most STPs (75%) are situated within cities. Although a significant number (25%) are located outside the cities, those locations are not far from the nearest cities. The non-urban STPs usually focus on agro-food and crop technologies.
While the distribution pattern of STPs in Europe is similar, the non-urban Parks appear only in Scandinavia where there are large areas with low population densities. Mostly the STPs are located in the urban-dense areas of Central and Eastern Europe.
Proximity to an academic environment
It is globally acknowledged that the physical proximity between an STP and a University enhances co-operation schemes between the two parties, and more importantly, between the university and the STP tenant companies.
A significant number of STPs worldwide (44%) are situated either within a University campus, or on land owned by a University. Even those located "elsewhere" are close to University campuses.
European statistics in this instance, however, present two opposite extremes:
In Eastern Europe 45% of STPs are located within university campuses, while in Southern Europe only 16% are in a university campus - although most of the rest of the STPs in this part of Europe are located quite near to university campuses or university-owned research facilities. In addition, the number of "in-campus" STPs in Southern Europe has increased in the last years, thus reinforcing the general worldwide trend. In contrast to Eastern and Southern Europe, a remarkable 83% of STPs in Central Europe are either located on a university campus or adjacent to it.
Of further interest is that half of STPs worldwide are "small" and mostly located on a university campus. Amongst STPs located outside university campuses, the percentage of mid to big and bigger sizes is higher. It is also interesting that where only 4% of STPs are big in terms of number of resident companies (more than 400 companies), 35% of them are big in terms of built area (more than 80 000m2 built area).
Green areas
| 1 ha equals 10 000 m2 or 2,47 acres
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Quality landscaping and master plans are important elements that enhance the image of STPs. The size of designated green areas (all the areas destined for trees, vegetation, gardens, lagoons, etc) varied from 20-49 ha for the smaller Parks to 60-100 ha for the mid to larger parks, and more than 100 ha for the big Parks.
This translates to:
- brownish STPs - 23% have up to 15% green areas of total area
- green enough STPs - 35% have 15%-30% green areas of total area
- pretty green STPs - 16% have 30%-50% green areas of total area
- very green STPs - 23% have over the 50% green areas of total area.
"Origin" of tenant companies
STPs are focused on their regions and cities. Having many resident companies from the same city or region as the location of the STP is not considered "narrow-minded localism", since STPs tend to foster and enhance the internationalisation of their companies.
Significant, the survey indicates that 66% of all STPs are region-based with over 40% of their resident companies coming from the same city or region. At the other end of the spectrum, 15% of STPs focus on attracting companies from other cities, regions or countries, where less that 10% of their resident companies come from their same city or region.
Admission criteria for locating at a Science and Technology Park
The large majority of STPs analyse the technological aspects and the degree of innovation of the companies that wish to locate in the Park. In some cases, actual research activities are also a prerequisite. Only 41% of STPs allow manufacturing activities and strong environmental regulations are enforced in 45% of STPs.
Job-creation is an important consideration, as 71% of STPs see themselves as job-creating projects, ie creating jobs that did not exist before, while 24% play a job-substitution role, ie "upgrading" the job structure of their cities or regions where new and knowledge- and technology-based jobs replace the older and less qualified ones.
Value-added services
All STPs offer space for companies - either land or built facilities for sale, lease or rent. In addition, however, the survey identified other "core" value-added services that are almost invariably exclusive to STPs, differentiating them from normal office park developments:
- 88% of STPs have one or more business incubators, which remains a highly significant element of STPs all over the world
- 76% of STPs have research or technology institutes/centres that mostly deal with applied research and technology and work in very close co-operation with industry
- 70% of STPs offer management support services, training activities and support/guidance to resident companies to obtain venture- or seed-capital funding
- 58% of STPs have educational facilities and activities, most of them run by universities or higher education institutions, and interestingly
- 15% of STPs now have a "residential" element - a phenomenon that has increased significantly in the last five years. Often these residences have features specially conceived for "knowledge workers", and can be used as offices as well as homes.
The business incubation relationship
There is a strong relationship between STPs and business incubation. Of the more than 88% of STPs that have business incubation activities, 23% have at least one Business Incubator (BI) with its own management team and 52% have a BIthat they manage themselves. In 13% of the cases, the STPs are basically a big BI that has added some facilities and services to serve the post-incubation stage. Only 12% of STPs have no business incubation activity.
Specialisation
The survey indicated the following with regard to the specialisation focus areas of STPs:
- 27% are "generalists", accepting companies and activities from many different sectors and technological fields (as long as they meet the STP admission criteria)
- 25% are "specialists", having been designed and conceived for one or more specific sectors, such as biotechnology, ICT, etc
- 48% are "focused generalists", initially conceived as generalists (in many cases officially remaining so), but gradually having become more specialised.
The current trend seems to be towards a higher degree of specialisation, with the percentage of "generalist" Parks decreasing.
Ownership
STPs launched and owned by the public sector (such as governments of different levels, public-funded foundations or public-funded universities) represent 33% of the existing STPs in the world, whereas public and private sector joint ownership amount to 30%.
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