Accelerating Technology-Based Growth in Developed, Developing, and Emerging Regions Worldwide - Technopolis: Best Practices for Science and Technology Cities - page 221

Four Main Strategies for Regional Economic Development. Source IC 2

Fig. 4 Institute

The parks contain a large variety of enterprises from automotive, to furniture, to
chemicals, to higher tech including electronics and medical devices. Despite these
advantages, the report offered these conclusions:

• The technology parks have not been as successful as originally intended in terms
of the key objective of job creation
• There is a high turnover of companies in these parks, companies that originally
set up to take advantage of economic incentives (e.g., tax abatements)—they
used up their Mexican incentives and migrated offshore to India, China, and
elsewhere to take advantage of new incentives
• There was no real creation of new industries or companies including spin-offs
• In reality the companies in the parks had very little R&D activity
• Connections between the companies and the local universities had not been
formed or were not productive
• There is a general impression among local politicians, universities, and other
''powers that be'' that the technology parks have not lived up to their potential.

Regional public-cooperation helped Austin to be quite successful in four main
strategies for regional economic development: firm relocation, firm retention and
evolution, building newer companies, and new institutional alliances and part-
nerships worldwide, Fig. 4 . Firm relocation, while especially important to
emerging and developing regions, tends to foster intense competition where there
are regional and national winners and losers. Firm retention and evolution, for
example, is more likely to concern leveraging regional assets (e.g., the local
university and talent) to migrate a firm from focusing on low-cost production to
high end R&D as was the case in Austin, Texas when IBM went from building
electric typewriters in 1960s to being a major globally competitive R&D center,
talent magnet, and patent generator.
However, we consider building new companies and new industry clusters as the
key to a region becoming a globally competitive ''technopolis.'' As in the case of
Austin, Texas with the launch and growth of global companies with local head-
quarters as in the case of DELL Corporation, National Instruments, and Whole
Foods, all with start-up and growth ties to education and research assets of the
University of Texas in Austin. The fourth strategy, Newer Institutional Alliances
and Partnerships, regionally and globally, is increasing key to the sustainable