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The effect of science and technology parks on a firm’s performance: a dynamic approach over time

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Abstract

We argue that the benefits provided by locations inside science and technology parks evolve over time. Firms inside parks can improve performance due to certain advantages related to knowledge spillovers and shared resources that can be particularly useful in earlier stages of the industry life cycle. In these industries, local knowledge sharing is particularly useful because no standards are clearly established, as we have confirmed in a sample of 12,800 firms from the PITEC database, located either on- or off-park. We also find that young firms can benefit more from the park than more established businesses in terms of both business growth and innovative capacity. Although older firms have greater experience and investments that would increase their capacity to absorb external knowledge, their associated rigidities prevent them from incorporating changes into their structures.

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Notes

  1. An open database available online http://icono.fecyt.es/PITEC/Paginas/descarga_bbdd.aspx

  2. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test determined that the variables were not normally distributed, so we could not use Pearson’s correlations.

  3. Model XV was nearly significant

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Acknowledgments

Funding for this research was provided by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ECO2015-67122-R, ECO2014-57131-R, ECO2011-29445), the Government of Aragón (Spain) and the European Social Fund through the COMPETE research group (S125). The authors are also grateful for the financial assistance obtained through Project ref UZ2016-SOC-01 and project 27242 from the Cátedra de Empresa Familiar (University of Zaragoza) and Grupo de Investigación Consolidado Estrategias de Crecimiento Empresarial (940376) – Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

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    Isabel Diez-Vial & Marta Fernández-Olmos

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  1. Isabel Diez-Vial
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Correspondence to Isabel Diez-Vial.

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Diez-Vial, I., Fernández-Olmos, M. The effect of science and technology parks on a firm’s performance: a dynamic approach over time. J Evol Econ 27, 413–434 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-016-0481-5

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