Conveners:
Juan A. Bertolin *email address protected*, SPAIN
Managing Director of espaitec Science and Technology Park, managed by General Foundation of the Universitat Jaume I of Castellon (www.espaitec.uji.es), Experience as Project Manager at Accenture (the ICT sector in Turkey, Finland, Switzerland, Britain, Italy, France, Mexico, Holland and Germany) and Grupo IT Deusto Valencia (projects on healthcare and telecommunications in the Valencian Community).
Guilherme Ary Plonski, *email address protected*, BRAZIL
Full professor of University of São Paulo (USP), affiliated with the Business Faculty and the Engineering School, is the research director of USP’s Center for Technology Policy and Management and the deputy director of the University’s Institute of Advanced Studies. He serves on the Latin-Iberoamerican Association of Technology Management’s executive board and on the International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation’s Advisory Council.
Members
- Dr. Emanuela Todeva, BCNED – Business Clusters, Networks and Economic Development, UK
- Dr Rabeh Morrar, An-Najah National University, Palestine
If you would like to join this Thematic Research Group in its collaboration activities, please e-mail a request to *email address protected*, or *email address protected*, or *email address protected*
If you want to engage in informal discussions with members of the group and to engage with the activities of the group, join the TRG LinkedIn Group !
Agenda and Vision
Sixty-six years ago the first science park was established. Eight years later the first business incubator started operations. A noticeable similitude is that neither one of those pioneering innovation niches was intentional, as they resulted from the acumen of entrepreneurial minds that perceived unconventional usages of available real estate. Science parks (a.k.a. research or technology parks) and incubators have disseminated and now operate in a large number of countries, regardless of their economic level or political ideology.
Two contrasting paths evolved during the first five decades since Stanford Research Park and Batavia Incubator were created: combination and differentiation. On one hand, several science parks now incorporate one or more incubators, and some incubators have expanded their scope to post-incubation, turning them into ‘proto science parks’. On the other hand, multiple and diverse applications developed, making incubators and science parks better understandable as families, each with different genera and species.
A phenomenon that has gradually surfaced since the mid 2000’s is the emergence of non-traditional types of innovation niches: accelerators, catapults, innovation districts, makerspaces, hackerspaces, co-working spaces, fab labs, tech shops, innovation labs, living labs and others. Although each of them possesses individual features, they share converging aims, which are akin to the purposes of incubators and science parks. This Thematic Research Group (SPI_TRG) welcomes contributions that: (i) delineate cognitive maps helpful for organizing the diverse array of practices; (ii) analyse the Triple Helix concepts underlying these new ‘areas of innovation’ (this term was coined by the International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation – IASP); (iii) describe practical cases that illuminate the expanding frontiers of innovation niches around the world.
The mission of this professional group is to become a relevant resource for researching to business incuators, science and technology Parks and other areas of innovation in terms of management, strategy and operation. The main interest of SPI-TRG is to engage academics and practitioners into cutting-edge research of mechanisms and capitalization bridges that would enable proper Science and Technology Parks and Incubators management and strategy approach.
SPI-TRG aims to provide:
- Support to their members to reinforce their management strategies and providing tools for optimize their operation.
- Exchange Best Practices in SPI among THA members.
- Research about state of art in SPI strategies and determine how they can be improved.
- Disseminate the THA and TRG activities (meetings, events, conferences, publications and research projects) to encourage other members to join TRG.
Although the main target group of SPI-TRG is THA members, TRG is willing to invite other external parties (Science and Technology Parks, Areas of Innovation, Incubators, Accelerators, Business Innovation Centres) to the group for the sake of sharing experiences and growing knowledge society.