How To Bring the Work of a Science Park to Its Territory

Abstract

Science parks have become useful instruments in transferring knowledge from universities to the industry. On the other hand, some studies have affirmed that technology transfer activities and results can be encouraged by geographical proximity between companies and university premises and people. If this is true, it would be useful to set up science park satellite sites near selected geographical areas. A few science parks have actually have done this. However, research in this field is scarce and anecdotic.

We qualitatively explored this field, using the case of the University of Valencia’s Science Park. Our work provides and tests a methodology to help with the decision to set up a science park satellite site, consisting of three questions: why, what and how. Our work also highlights some key issues related to the viability of this kind of decision.