Business Incubation Strategy of High-Tech Venture Firms in a Science Park - Technopolis: Best Practices for Science and Technology Cities - page 142

businesses and science parks as an effective method of local economic develop-
ment. As a matter of fact, among strategic resources of a business, the cultural
climate is the most important factor. Strategic resources of a business do not lie
only in capital or technology, but also in human capacities and adaptability. A
science park is a property-based initiative which (UKSPA 2006 ) has formal links
with a university and/or other higher educational and research institutions (HEI); is
designed to encourage the formation and growth of knowledge-based businesses
and other organizations normally residing on site; has a management function
which is actively engaged in the transfer of technology and business skills to the
organizations on site. Within this definition, it is also possible to identify several
sub-forms like technology park, technopolis, and so on, which complement other
initiatives designed to stimulate a more productive relationship between industry
and academia.
At the core of the science park phenomenon is a view about how technologies
are created. Science parks constitute a channel by which academic science is
linked to commerce. This then, is a highly particular model of scientific research
and industrial innovation. Fundamentally, it is a linear model, in which there is a
chain of successive, interrelated activities. These begin with basic scientific
research and pass through applied and more developmental research activities, the
development of new product and process ideas, the evolution and testing of pro-
totypes, to commercial production and finally to diffusion (Massey et al. 1992 ).
According to Massey et al. ( 1992 , pp. 58-60), two major policy questions have
historically emerged from the linear model. The first is how to increase the supply
of basic research ideas available for development. The second major question has
been how to quicken the development and commercialization of basic ideas. The
science park model fits as one possible means of solving the second problem. The
purpose of the science park model is to nurture high technology-based small- and
medium-sized firms for local economic development as spin-offs from science
parks. Instead of one process of innovation from research to commercialization,
however, they have also suggested an interactive model in which new ideas are
generated and developed at all stages of innovation, including the production
stage. 1 Small business has become increasingly attractive as a focus for local
economic developmental attention. Given the relatively high failure rate of new
small businesses on the one hand, and the public sector's expectations for them as
the bulwark of the local economy on the other, it is only logical that a portion of
most local economic development efforts is aimed at the survival and success of
small firms (Allen 1985 , pp. 16-17).
1 Suggesting the ten major city examples of science park plans in Korea, Park noted that most of
the science parks are under an initial planning stage and R&D units or firms are not actually
located in the parks. He continued to argue that there are no significant differences in the selection
of key industries among the proposed science parks according to the two models (Park 1992,
p. 242-248).