Technology, Market and Company Journeys: How Can We Help Them Succeed? - Technopolis: Best Practices for Science and Technology Cities - page 200

Fig. 4 Characterisation of
the role science and
technology parks play in
innovation systems

work by science and technology parks is to support entrepreneurs take their ideas
through a selection process that selects out those ideas deemed to have low
potential and leaves those with some perceived value in place for further devel-
opment but that requires skills and finance to be mobilised. The stage beyond that
is to build businesses that address potential markets or if the idea or skills do not
make it, the skills developed in the process should be recycled back into the
business community.
Underlying these functional links are a series of technology, market and
company journeys Trezona ( 2008 ) which if successfully executed lead to an
increase in the number, size and efficiency of companies in a region.

4.1 Technology Journey

The technology journey that underpins these links is outside the remit of science
parks but becomes interesting when entrepreneurs begin to appreciate the value of
these new ideas in satisfying a real or perceived customer requirement. This may
result from a response by an entrepreneur to a technical specification which pushes
technology towards a market or appreciation of a market by an entrepreneur for a
technical specification which helps to pull this towards the market.
This technology journey can be characterised in the following way (Fig. 5 ).

Fig. 5 Characterisation of technology journey in business development