Finnish study calls for technology centres to build 'critical mass'
A report on the impact of the five largest technology centres in Finland has recommended that the centres should concentrate on developing networking between a few key industry lines, help to strengthen critical mass and play a more active brokering role between investors and enterprises. The report, published in October by the Finnish ministry of trade and industry, Finnish Science Park Association TEKEL and Otaniemi Science Park, Espoo, evaluated the activities and effects of the Espoo, Jyväskylä, Oulu, Tampere and Turku business parks. It recommends that the centres concentrate on networking between a few - two or three - key focal lines of industry in order to build up critical mass in profitable areas. The report says that the centres should be aware of areas which show potential for future profitability, as well as those which are currently doing well, and select enterprises of differing size and development level in order to build a core of critical mass in key areas. The report also suggests that technology centres should help to found and organise regional enterprise accelerators in order to continue the work of business incubators and encourage new enterprises to stay at or near the technology centre, encouraging both cooperation between enterprises and the growth of critical mass. The study recommended the development of informal networks to encourage cooperation at an early stage, ranging from cafés and meeting places to discussion forums. Technology centres could also benefit from the partial provision of services, contracting out some services to external suppliers and providing information on these suppliers to enterprises. The report also backed the assumption of a stronger brokering role between investors and enterprises by the technology centres, for example by coaching enterprises in negotiation skills with investors and organising meetings for investors and enterprises. Data was collected through interviews with representatives of technology centre organisations, public sector stakeholders, universities and research institutes and venture capitalists in each of the technology centre regions. The report found that overall, technology centres have contributed to the creation of new technology-intensive enterprises. It identifies an improvement in the image of both regions and individual enterprises as one of the main effects of technology centres. However, despite the role of the centres in gathering a critical mass of enterprises in a common work environment, this does not automatically lead to cooperation between enterprises, universities and other research institutions. While 67 per cent of the enterprises which responded to the questionnaire had cooperated with other enterprises, and more than half of the respondent enterprises had cooperated with universities and research institutes, little over a third of them had undertaken research and development in cooperation with other enterprises. The most common forms of cooperation were research, product development and technology transfer. The study also found that the technology centres have a greater impact on enterprises where emphasis has been laid on start-up support.