S&T Parks and Business Incubators

Science and technology parks and business incubators are 'property-based' enablers that provide space, facilities and other value added services. The Evidence Network serves science and technology parks, business parks, incubators and similar innovation stimulation enterprises. These entities support innovation practices worldwide and are found in virtually every country interested in fostering innovation. Their increasing numbers¹ give testimony to their value, while The Evidence Network's methodology gives direct evidence of their impact.

These property-based parks and incubators are professionally managed and designed to support the successes of their corporate tenants, and ultimately the wealth of the geographic regions in which they are located. Parks and incubators stimulate synergies among universities, research and development institutions, firms and entrepreneurs through the provision of environments conducive to creativity and innovation, and through services that help to transform ideas into business successes.

Challenges

Parks and incubators are characterized by being capital intensive, they usually benefit from public funds, and serve a finite number of clients. This makes it essential that they be able to regularly demonstrate their service and mission performance, a challenge for property-intensive organizations that often use occupancy or similar capacity measures. Further, performance reports often highlight some of the more successful 'graduates' of the park or incubator, but decision-makers need to know overall mission and service performance in a form that aggregates the impact on all park or incubator clients.

The Evidence Network's solution

The Evidence Network's impact assessment of parks and incubators addresses these challenges. For example, we focus on the effectiveness of environments intended to foster innovation. Key survey questions are directed towards the effectiveness and impact of specialized real estate or facilities including offices, common areas, accommodation, wet/dry laboratories, tools or equipment. We also offer survey questions to elicit effectiveness and impact of administrative and professional services. Finally, our questions assess the overall impact of those that provide financing or access to capital, linkages to critical resources, networking or intellectual property management services.

¹ Worldwide since the 1950's, 25% of all science parks were established between 2000-2006; membership in the International Association of Science Parks more than doubled between 1997-2007 (from IASP Worldwide Statistics on Science and Technology Parks, 2006-2007).