Science Parks and Business incubators: The Portuguese Case

Abstract

Science Parks (SP) and Business Incubators (BI) have been established all over the industrialised and developing world as a pledge for economic development. Although in economic theory, location of R&D is not a critical variable for its diffusion and technology adoption, it is widely accepted that the daily eye-to-eye contact is crucial for the establishment of networks and partnerships. The present paper is based on a survey of all Portuguese SPs and BIs. Despite being rather similar in their basic characteristics, it is still possible to distil some lessons and critical variables for the success of each infrastructure: quality of management and effectiveness of university links are seemingly the most important features to distinguish SPs and BIs and compare their performance. Finally, we transform the distilled lessons in assessment criteria and propose a tentative typology to better describe and sort the SPs and BIs in Portugal.