From Specialisation to Diversification in Science and Technology Parks

Science and technology parks have been popular among policy-makers at several spatial levels to promote innovation and economic growth of certain localities. However, this mainly property-led policy tool has been criticised for two reasons. First, it often failed to successfully support regional networking and technology transfer to regional firms. Only unplanned science and technology parks, such as Silicon Valley, seem to have been successfully fostering regional networking and technology transfer which has led, in turn, to the development of competitive innovative clusters. Secondly, it has too often bet on the same horses and become too specialised in the same fields, such as in micro-electronics or in biotechnology. This specialisation has been theoretically supported by the cluster concept. It has led to both a zero sum game of competition between locations as well as potentially negative path dependence and lock-ins. This paper suggests increasingly supporting diversification in science and technology parks by bringing together hitherto unconnected technologies. Several recently discussed concepts could be used to support diversification, such as related variety (Frenken et al. 2007), regional branching (Boschma and Frenken 2011), regional innovation platforms (Harmaakorpi et al. 2011) and transversality (Cooke 2011).