Getting down to business

European educators haven't been as entrepreneurial as their American counterparts, but now they are jumping on the tech park bandwagon in a big way.

Alfred Marshall, a noted Victorian economist at the University of Cambridge, is the father of research parks. He first suggested the idea of like-minded industries clustering together to enjoy economies of scale-a theory that formed the basis for centers where academic research and business acumen intersect to forge or nurture new companies and create jobs and wealth. But the mother of all technology parks is Stanford University, in Northem California. It built the first in 1951, the Stanford Research Park, which has not only spawned some of the world's most famous tech companies-from Hewlett-Packard to Yahoo! to Cisco Systems-but hundreds of imitators at schools across the country. Back in England, it would be another 19 years after Stanford broke ground on its park before Cambridge's Trinity College launched Europe's first research park, Cambridge Science Park.

That lag between the U.S. and Europe continued for several decades. By 1990, there were several hundred technology parks in the United States, most based on the Stanford model. There were at most 100 parks in Europe that year. But over the last decade, and particularly in the last five years, Europe has experienced an explosion of research parks. Exact numbers are hard to come by, in part because definitions vary, but the International Association of Science Parks (IASP) conservatively estimates there are 170 parks in Europe today, with another 40 on the drawing board. In France, for example, 13 parks have opened in the last five years bringing the total to 23. Ten new parks are planned for Spain alone. Two parks just opened in Ireland-in Kerry and Tipperary-while the University of Belfast, in Northern Ireland just launched a park, as well. "They're everywhere; everyone wants one now," says Jim Robinson, former president of the AURP, the Association of University Research Parks, and head of the Research Triangle Park in Raleigh, N.C. Hot new areas of research in old-world parks are biotechnology, nanotechnology, and wireless communications.

The boom in tech parks in Europe has been sparked mainly by economic development needs. Local governments view them as a way to boost their economies. But just how well tech parks serve as economic development magnets is open to speculation, because there's no research on the subject. The IASP is, however, undertaking a study to determine their economic effect. Nevertheless, the anecdotal evidence is enticing. Since Cambridge Science Park opened its doors 22 years ago, a host of other parks have sprung up in its wake, creating what's been called the Cambridge Phenomenon or the largest gathering of high-tech companies in one region outside the Silicon Valley. It's estimated that Cambridge high-tech firms annually generate exports worth more than $2.34 billion. Today, these companies employ 4,500 to 5,000 workers, up from between 1,500 and 2,000 a decade ago. In the 17 years since the Heidelberg Technologiepark opened its doors, it's jumped from 11 companies employing a handful of people, to 50 companies with 1,500 on their payrolls. The National Technological Park, which is linked to Limerick University-the MIT of Ireland-has in the last decade nearly doubled in size to 90 companies employing 5,000 people. When other European communities and schools look at those numbers, it's understandable why science parks look so alluring.

What took Europeans so long to see the attraction? Mainly cultural differences. British and Continental universities and academics were wary of commercializing intellectual property or working with industry. Luis Sanz, director general of the IASP, which is based in Spain, says European schools were always as competent as their American counterparts when it came to research, but, he adds, "they were behind in their relations with industry, their penetration of markets ... and, in general, in their understanding of business and entrepreneurship." At Warwick University, a school heavily oriented toward engineering and science, Mark Bobe, liaison officer to the Warwick Science Park, puts it more bluntly: "There was a degree of suspicion; they didn't like getting their hands dirty with commercial interests."

Bradley Stringer is a case in point. He's the founder of Cellfactors, a company that devises human-cell therapies for bone regeneration and neuro-degenerative disorders, based on research he did at the University of Sheffield. When he began obtaining patents in 1992, five years before he started Cellfactors, many of his colleagues viewed him with raised eyebrows. "I was looked at as something of a maverick. Now, at the risk of sounding arrogant, I'm seen by some as a bit of a visionary." Luckily for Stringer, the then head of the school, Vice Chancellor Gareth Roberts, who now runs Oxford University, was very encouraging and the school put up nearly $160,000 to get Stringer started.