Regional Innovation Support Systems and Technopoles - Technopolis: Best Practices for Science and Technology Cities - page 58

try to stimulate networking among SMEs in the region by bringing together
managers of SMEs at workshops, business meetings or presentations of innovation
projects. The regional centres also advice firms about national aid schemes. The
effectiveness of Syntens has been extensively evaluated in the first half of the
1990s and, generally, the results of these studies are positive (Technopolis 2000 ).
In Utrecht, Syntens has good connections with the Provincial Government, the
Chamber of Commerce and the Faculty of Economics and Management at the
University of Professional Education (Technopolis 2000 ). It, has, however, very
few connections with the other colleges and universities, even though Syntens have
tried on several occasions to establish better rapport. The main agency for devel-
oping innovation in the region (Syntens), therefore, is not well enough connected to
the largest potential supply (higher education institutes and public research estab-
lishments in the region). Moreover, the transfer office of the university focuses its
support on advising its own researchers instead of companies in the region.
In addition to Syntens, the Chamber of Commerce is the dominant organisation
when it comes to providing all firms with general business information and
referring them to other agencies. Syntens can be regarded as the main agency when
it comes to providing support to innovative SMEs in the region. Utrecht, therefore,
seems to have a 'Two Stop Shop' system, with the Chamber of Commerce and
Syntens as the main agencies. Moreover, some of the industry associations in the
region, Metaalunie/PKM in particular, provide their members with useful business
information and technological and innovation advice. Since the industry associa-
tions are national organisations in the first place, with offices in the regions which
cover areas much larger than provinces, they are not much linked to the provincial
institutional set-up.
Compared to famous university regions abroad and less famous ones in the
Netherlands, such as Leiden and Twente, which have been successful in stimu-
lating spin-offs from university, Utrecht University has been relatively passive
until recently. It established a building with office space for spin-offs, the Matthias
van Geuns building (Van Weesep and Wever 1996 ), when other universities had
done so already for a long time. The building has not only been built very late,
offices are also mainly rented by university institutes and the centre lacks any kind
of technological, financial or business advisory support for start-up businesses.
During many years there have been talks and negotiations to set up an incubator
centre for biomedical business start-ups at the university campus, but until recently
nothing was realised.
Finally, some five years ago a couple of innovation partners, such as the prov-
ince, the city government, the university and the newly created coordinating body,
Taskforce Innovatie Regio Utrecht, have pushed the establishment of Utrecht
Science Park, which aims at both attracting inward investment in R&D and fos-
tering knowledge transfer and spin-offs. The latter is particularly facilitated by
UtrechtInc as the main incubator in Utrecht Science Park. Arguably due to the weak
role of the provinces in innovation policy, there has been little local and regional
pressure to set up a technopole or incubator centres for a relatively long time.