A critical analysis of Science and Technology Parks: Learning from the Italian Experience.

The growing importance of Science and Technology Parks (STPs) as tools to promote technology transfer and innovation for local development suggests denoting ways to observe these multifaceted realities. The proceedings from the international conference of STPs held in Bilbao in June 2001, economic theories on STPs, the debate between real estate investments and knowledge infrastructures provide a state of the art on these parks. Therefore, literature, present and future international trends of STPs are compared with the analysis of six Italian and two international case studies. The regional economic context, the actors of the park, their infrastructures and activities provide other perspectives proposed to highlight practical experiences. The findings suggest an observation of STPs based on three levels of analysis: operation, context and governance of a park. Four principal characteristics define the operations of the STPs: the effect of the local action of STPs (space), the relationships STPs-research sources (scope), facilitate firm dynamics for their growth and formation (time) and increase competition through knowledge diffusion (scale). Furthermore, the work hypothesizes for further avenues to deepen the observation of the flow of information in parks activity and the rule of the government in supporting parks’ development.