Where property and process meet

Innovation locations such as science parks and incubators offer a specialist product to hi-tech companies.

From a property perspective the fact that the market is specialist has meant that property companies in the 1980s and 1990s had to make a positive choice to invest time and money to developing knowledge of the sector.

Those companies that for whatever reasons chose to invest are key stakeholders and key players in the science park movement today.

The majority of these companies are members of the UK Science Park Association (UKSPA).

However, the story did not start with property, it started with the process of “commercialisation” – the process whereby a discovery made through research can, given the right business advice, be developed into a start-up company able, over time, to generate income from the commercialisation of the idea.

1986 was the year when universities were given ownership of the intellectual property generated within their institutions.

Incubation support initiative

As companies began to spin out of universities and the private sector, it became obvious that there was a need for physical space to support them.

The public sector, in the form of local authorities, regional development agencies (RDAs) and devolved administrations, initially viewed science park developments as property developments. Public sector funds have been invested in capital build in an effort to provide the facilities required to retain or grow commercial activity within a particular region.

By the turn of the century, the public sector recognised that this was not enough and so incubation policies were created that recognised the value of an incubation support process.

The debate over the value of a “process” strategy over a “property” strategy ensued.

Would a focus on process rather than property be the answer?

Property-process approach

Analysis has shown that a focus on process alone was not sufficient.

A new strategy merging the two elements of property and process has already emerged and hopefully will be increasingly evident in RDA and devolved administration enterprise and innovation strategies in the coming years.

Science parks continue to recognise the value of support mechanisms for their tenant companies, and also regard the presence of an incubator service as a way to attract new companies to the area.

At the same time, it has become clear that successful incubator tenants require grow-on space.

So, what was once a clash of “property” versus “process” is now emerging as a new era of property-process-economic development-partnership.

Partnership development

In the 1990s, partnerships between universities, the private sector and the public sector were rare and where they existed, they were not necessarily effective.

Today, many science parks are made up of partners from all three key sectors (academic, private and public), all bringing their skills and agendas to the table.

Analysis of the formative years of partnership working in the sector revealed that there was a need for improved communications between partners by recognising the occurrence of miscommunication resulting from the differing cultures and expectations of the three sectors. Today, many of UKSPA’s business affiliates involved in science park developments start with partnership development work, which in their view is critical.

Landmark conference

Given the right property, partnership and process, how should the product be managed to best effect?

It was during the first half of this century that the results of many different and disparate analyses started to reveal some of the critical success factors (CSF).

The UKSPA Conference which took place in February 2007 was a landmark event for the science park movement.

During the two days, over 20 papers were presented reflecting lessons learned, suggesting models of development and identifying critical success factors for the future.

This is the beginning of a new stage in the science park evolution and UKSPA’s role is to support its members who are operating in this arena and are beginning to benefit from these new insights and developments.