Technovation 19 (1999) 673–680

www.elsevier.com/locate/technovation

Beyond the linear view of innovation in science park evaluation

An analysis of Western Australian Technology Park
John Phillimore*
Institute for Science and Technology Policy, Murdoch University, Murdoch, WA, Australia, 6150

Received 24 December 1998; received in revised form 14 January 1999; accepted 1 April 1999

Abstract

Science and technology (S&T) parks have been viewed sceptically in much of the academic literature when judged in terms of
technology development or urban renewal. S&T Parks have been criticised for relying on an outdated, linear, model of innovation,
which assumes that scientific knowledge can be transferred unproblematically from a research university to an adjacent Park for
development. Innovation is now widely recognised as a complex non-linear process involving feedback loops and the creation of
synergies through a diverse range of information networks. However, much evaluation of S&T Parks continues to implicitly use a
linear framework by concentrating on the direct transfer of knowledge from universities to Park companies, and has a fairly limited
conceptualisation of whether interaction is occurring or not. This article moves beyond the linear approach by examining interaction
and networking within Western Australian Technology Park (WATP), as well as between WATP companies and universities. It
also compares the situation in WATP with the findings from a study by Vedovello of Surrey Research Park. It finds that there is
more interaction occurring than might be estimated using the traditional evaluative model and identifies several different categories
of company which exist at the Park, in terms of their interactive behaviour.  1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Linear model of innovation; Technology parks; Information networks

1. Introduction: academic analysis of science and
technology parks
Castells and Hall (1994, p. 224) list three motivations
for the establishment of technopoles (their generic term
for science and technology parks): reindustrialisation,
regional development, and the creation of synergies. The
first two of these objectives are fairly straightforward,
and could alternatively be described as technology
development and urban or regional renewal respectively.
The third aim is less clear. At its narrowest, it could be
seen simply as the promotion of technology transfer
from universities to companies. However, Castells and
Hall describe it more fulsomely as ‘the generation of
new and valuable information through human inter-
vention’ to the extent that an ‘innovative milieu’, which
generates constant innovation, is created and sustained
(Castells and Hall, 1994).
* Tel.: +61-8-9360-6104; fax: +61-8-9360-6421.
E-mail address: j.phillimore@murdoch.edu.au (J. Phillimore)
In the UK, with the onset of urban decline in many
cities in the 1980s, the second of these three motivations
was predominant. Local authorities and universities
established science parks as a form of urban redevelop-
ment. In Australia by contrast, the first motivation was
more prominent — i.e. technology park development in
the 1980s was an integral aspect of government (high)
technology policy in many States. This was partly due
to the relative absence of the urban problems facing Bri-
tain, but also because of the greater role played in
developing technology parks in Australia by State
governments which had a responsibility for, and interest
in, industry development.1 In both cases, technology
transfer was an avowed aim — in particular, the encour-
agement of knowledge transfer from universities to the
commercial sector. However, the more comprehensive
1
More recently in Australia, there has been a push to extend the
technology park model into urban regeneration/development, through
the application of the idea of technology precincts, and the regener-
ation of older industrial sites (such as the Redfern railway station in
Sydney) into technology parks.

0166-4972/99/$ - see front matter  1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 1 6 6 - 4 9 7 2 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 6 2 - 0
674 J. Phillimore / Technovation 19 (1999) 673–680
idea of knowledge and information networking was less
evident; the image was much more of a uni-directional
flow of research emanating from universities being com-
mercialised by park-based companies.
Academic studies of science and technology parks
have generally tended to be quite critical of their under-
lying assumptions and actual performance (for a sum-
mary see Grayson, 1993). Perhaps the best known and
most critical work in this respect is that of Massey et al.
(1992), who regarded such parks as ‘high tech fantasies’
(see Quintas et al., 1992, for a summary). They argued
that science parks were not major sources of technology
development, and that geographical proximity between
a university and a science park was alone likely to count
for very little in promoting technology transfer. Instead,
they found many science parks to be primarily a form
of prestigious real estate development, physically iso-
lated from the surrounding society and thus quite
unlikely to generate productive ‘synergies’ of any sig-
nificant kind. Castells and Hall (1994, p. 226), while not
being as critical as Massey et al. (1992), nevertheless
pointed out that synergies are ‘most likely to happen in
dense urban networks’ — which are generally not
present in low density science parks. In similar vein,
Vedovello (1997) found no evidence in her study of Sur-
rey Research Park that geographical proximity was sig-
nificant in promoting research links between university
and Park companies.
There has not been a great deal of analysis of tech-
nology parks in Australia. Joseph (1994) notes that the
few evaluations which have been conducted show Aus-
tralian technology parks are similar to parks elsewhere
in their relative lack of success in achieving technology
development, urban/regional renewal or technology
transfer. He criticises Australian technology parks on a
number of grounds: there is a lack of clarity over policy
objectives and performance criteria and thus critical
evaluation and assessment; they tend to lead to an
unhelpful dichotomy between sunrise and sunset indus-
tries (emphasising the former) which leads to certain
activities (e.g. research) being favoured over others (e.g.
development or manufacturing); and, most significantly,
they are rooted in an outdated linear model of inno-
vation. He argues for new criteria and policies to be
adopted towards S&T Parks, which focus in particular
on ‘the creation, acquisition and handling of infor-
mation’ (p. 54). Such a focus ‘would emphasise infor-
mation networks, the non-linearity of innovation and the
diversity and novelty of information that lies outside the
bounds of science and technology’ (p. 58). Building such
networks is possibly even more important in a relatively
isolated and sparsely populated country such as Australia
(and by extension, Western Australia), where geographic
proximity to information sources and the development
of a critical mass of researchers and innovators is intrin-
sically more difficult to achieve.
This article tries to meet these criticisms and chal-
lenges set by Joseph and others in the case of Western
Australian Technology Park (WATP). It looks at the col-
laborative activities of WATP occupants in order to
assess the extent to which networking and synergies are
being developed at the Park.
In doing so, the paper attempts to go beyond tra-
ditional academic analysis of S&T Parks. As discussed
already, these have generally noted, disapprovingly, that
‘at the core of the science park concept lies the idea that
scientific knowledge leads in some linear progression to
technological innovation’ (Quintas et al., 1992, p. 161).
Most evaluations have then judged the success of science
parks largely on the basis of this linear model by concen-
trating on the development of formal research links from
universities to industry and, not surprisingly, found the
S&T Park to be inadequate in promoting innovation as
originally intended. However, it may be that while the
original intention of S&T Parks was based on the linear
model, other activities and linkages are being created
which are being missed by observers because they are
only looking for direct, formal, university-to-Park link-
ages. Vedovello (1997, p. 501), for example, showed
that although formal research links were not strength-
ened by the science park relationship, informal and
human resource links were enhanced by geographic
proximity. In view of our better understanding of the
systemic and networked nature of innovation (Castells
and Hall, 1994, p. 224), such informal and personal link-
ages are often as important in promoting innovation and
the development of synergies as the establishment of
more formal research relationships.
Most studies of S&T Parks also ignore relationships
between companies on the Park (e.g. Quintas et al.,
1992; Vedovello, 1997). Yet assessing on-Park links are
crucial to gaining a fuller understanding of the role of
proximity in promoting innovation. Otherwise, the
underlying linear view — that innovation consists of
‘basic research’ in universities being transferred to
science park companies for further development —
remains. Also as a consequence, our characterisation of
Park companies tends to be restricted to a binary divide:
either they are involved in formal knowledge transfer to
and from the adjacent university, or they are not. As will
be seen in the discussion below, broadening the scope
of the study to include Park–Park interaction provides a
richer, more complex picture of interaction and net-
working as it occurs on S&T Parks.
The article is structured as follows. Section 2 intro-
duces WATP and gives a brief account of its history,
current status and future plans. Section 3 describes and
presents the results of a survey of WATP occupants
which the authors carried out in 1998, looking princi-
pally at the extent of collaborative activity undertaken
by Park companies with local universities and other on-
Park companies. The discussion in this section also
 J. Phillimore / Technovation 19 (1999) 673–680
places the survey findings in historical and comparative
context by contrasting the results with three previous
studies: a study of WATP conducted in 1989; a 1994
study of Surrey Research Park in the UK; and a recent
analysis of a group of innovative Western Australian
companies not located at WATP. Section 4 provides
some concluding thoughts.
2. Western Australian Technology Park: an
overview
WATP was established in 1985, on 32 ha of land
opposite Curtin University of Technology, about 5 km
from the centre of Perth, the capital city of Western Aus-
tralia. After a slow start, WATP has now almost reached
capacity, and is soon to be extended by a further 8 ha,
partly to cater for the relocation to Perth of the CSIRO
Division of Petroleum Engineering, a large Common-
wealth research agency currently based in Melbourne.
There are also plans to establish a broader technology
precinct in the area, to include not just WATP and Cur-
tin, but also two State Government research-based
departments, a technical college and related social facili-
ties.
Unlike many S&T Parks elsewhere, WATP is differ-
ent in that it was a State Government rather than a uni-
versity initiative. Curtin University was supportive but
had no formal role in the Park’s establishment. Curtin
in fact gained its university status only in 1989 (four
years after WATP opened), and has a more applied
engineering than a basic research focus. Western Aus-
tralia itself is a State traditionally dominated by mining
and agriculture, and would probably not appear to be an
obvious base for a sustainable technology park, given its
small population, low population densities and distance
from major markets. Promoting interaction and synergy
on the basis of ‘dense urban networks’ would seem to
be an ambitious undertaking in this setting.
Indeed, an evaluation of WATP undertaken in 1989
exposed a number of weaknesses and shortcomings
(Parker and Jevons, 1989). It found some evidence of
interaction with universities, but nothing out of the ordi-
nary — in fact, non-Park firms had more interactions
than Park-based firms. There was little interaction
between tenants. Surveyed WATP companies were quite
critical of the Park management of the time, with few
companies receiving assistance. The authors rec-
ommended that an advisory board of management be
established which would develop a statement of objec-
tives for the Park; that zoning restrictions be eased to
enable certain manufacturing activities to be permitted;
675
and that Park management be encouraged to actively
facilitate interaction between firms.
Most of these recommendations have been followed.
An Advisory Board was set up; zoning restrictions were
eased, and a new Park management company was
appointed. The management was experienced in com-
mercial real estate and has been instrumental in ‘filling’
the park. In addition, they have adopted a more hands-on
role in managing the Park and encouraging interaction
between tenants. They have also become closely
involved in the International Association of Science
Parks (IASP) and in setting up an Australian technology
park association. While the Park’s objectives have not
been revised, they remain broadly in line with practice
elsewhere: to promote R&D, technology transfer and
development, etc. Curtin University has also been more
active; it took over the head lease of the R&D
(incubator) Centre, and several Curtin spin-off firms and
research centres are now located on WATP.
As of August 1998, there were 64 organisations
located on WATP, comprising 58 technology-based
companies, five central service organisations and one
small government agency. The technology companies
were spread among several sectors; almost half (47%)
were in IT/electronics, around a fifth each were in
mining/energy and in commercial services, while the
remainder were in environment and
medical/pharmaceutical. From 19 technology-based
companies employing around 280 people in 1989, the
Park has grown steadily to a situation in 1998 where
the 58 companies employed around 1300 people. The
companies ranged in size from one-person operations to
one company with over 280 employees. Average
employment per company was 21 people, while the
median was 10 people.
Encouraging R&D is of course an important role for
a technology park. The survey showed that around three
quarters of all WATP companies performed at least
some R&D, with total R&D expenditure being estimated
at around $15 million, or 5% of turnover. For companies
performing R&D, the R&D/turnover ratio was closer to
10%. R&D intensity, based on the percentage of com-
pany employees involved in R&D, varied quite consider-
ably between companies, but from the survey it would
appear that around 20% of all staff were involved in
R&D.
Despite its recovery in the past few years and apparent
success in terms of the broad indicators outlined above,
there remains scepticism among academics, at least,
about the Park’s performance. For example, the Parker
and Jevons study is still quoted to indicate that the extent
to which the Park is encouraging interaction and net-
working is unclear (see Joseph, 1994, pp. 50–51). There-
fore, it was felt that an independent investigation would
be valuable to examine in greater depth the role which
WATP is playing in creating an ‘innovative milieu’.
676 J. Phillimore / Technovation 19 (1999) 673–680
3. Survey: description and results
In August 1998, a survey was sent to all organisations
based at WATP, asking for basic data as well as more
extensive detail on their collaborative activities. A total
of 38 companies answered more detailed questions
related to local collaboration, representing a good
response rate of 65% of the Park’s 58 technology com-
panies. A separate, simpler question about all collabor-
ative activities received 52 replies, or 90% of all firms.
Companies were first asked if they maintained links
with universities or research organisations (RO’s), such
as CSIRO, in Western Australia. Companies were then
asked whether they maintained links with other WATP
companies, and whether these links were not, quite or
very important. Overall results are presented in Fig. 1.
The survey found 24 of the 38 WATP companies (or
63%) had at least one link with a local university or RO,
leaving 14 without a link. Most linked companies (22)
had some interaction with Curtin University, while 13
had links to other local universities or RO’s. On-Park
interaction was also quite extensive, with 23 (or 61%)
of companies having some link with other Park occu-
pants. Of these, most (20) had at least one link which
was ‘quite important’ or ‘very important’, while 13 had
more than one link.
In her study of Surrey Research Park (SRP) in the
UK, Vedovello (1997) grouped the types of collabor-
ation between Park companies and universities into three
categories. First, there were formal links such as research
contracts or analysis and testing. Second, there were
human resource links such as sponsoring student projects
or recruiting graduates. Third, there were informal links
such as personal contacts with university staff, attending
seminars or accessing libraries. Results from the WATP
survey are given in Fig. 2, along with comparisons from
the Surrey survey.
Fig. 2 shows that WATP companies have much lower
levels of university linkage than their SRP counterparts,
although the balance between the type of links was simi-
lar. Informal links are most frequent, followed by human
resource and then formal links, although the difference
between the latter two is much less in the WATP case
than in Surrey. The proportion of firms with formal link-
Fig. 1. Local linkages by WATP companies. Source: author’s survey.
Fig. 2. Links between Park companies and universities, by type,
WATP and SRP. Source: for WATP: author’s survey; for SRP: derived
from Vedovello (1997, Table 5, p. 497).
ages was virtually the same, despite the lower overall
level of linkages in WA compared to Surrey. In WA,
links with the adjacent university, Curtin, are much
stronger on all counts than links with other local research
institutions whereas at SRP, formal linkages occur more
with universities other than Surrey. There are actually
more WATP companies with formal links to Curtin (the
least common type of link) than there are companies
with informal links to other local universities. Proximity
does count, according to these results. The depth and
extent of these linkages is explored further in Table 1.
Table 1 shows that it is not just informal links which
are encouraged by the proximity of Curtin and WATP.
The number of companies with all three linkages to Cur-
tin is double the number with such linkages to other local
universities. Despite the significantly lower number of
linked companies at WATP compared to Surrey, the pro-
portion of companies with multiple links with the host
university was almost the same. Formal-only links (those
most related to research) were actually higher in WA
than in Surrey, suggesting that proximity is important
for promoting research links in the WA case.
Vedovello found that 20 of the 21 companies (95%)
she surveyed had some type of link with the University
of Surrey, compared to a figure of only 58% for WATP-
Curtin links. This discrepancy is potentially worrying.
However, there may be alternative explanations. First,
the 21 firms surveyed were those who agreed to be inter-
viewed following an approach from the interviewer
(Vedovello, personal communication, 1998). It is likely
that there would have been a selection bias in favour of
firms with links, given that the survey was explicitly
about linkages. The WATP sample was significantly
larger (38 out of 58, compared to 21 out of 60 for the
Surrey survey), and therefore more likely to include non-
linked firms. Second, SRP is explicitly a research (rather
than technology) park and did not permit manufacturing,
so one might expect a greater research focus to exist
than WATP, which encourages some manufacturing
activities. Finally, SRP is owned by the University of
Surrey which requires all undergraduates to have train-
ing in a company as part of their study; this helps explain
the high human resource linkages figures.
One issue which Vedovello did not raise but which is
 J. Phillimore / Technovation 19 (1999) 673–680 677

Table 1
Links between Park companies and universities, WATP and SRPa

Links WATP–Curtin Univ. WATP–other WA SRP–Surrey Univ. SRP–other

universities universities

No. % No. % No. % No. %

Informal only 5 13 3 8 7 33 2 10
HR only 1 3 1 3 1 5 1 5
Formal only 3 8 2 5 0 0 1 5
Inf.+HR 4 11 1 3 5 24 2 10
I+F 1 3 2 5 2 10 2 10
I+HR+F 8 21 4 11 5 24 4 20
No links 16 42 25 66 1 5 8 40
Total 38 100 38 100 21 100 20 100

a
Source: WATP: author’s survey; SRP: Vedovello (1997, Table 6, p. 498).

potentially significant is the extent of interaction within

the research or technology park. As noted, 61% of the
WATP sample maintained links on the Park. Table 2
gives more detail on these interactions.
Clearly, research-based collaboration (joint research
and shared equipment) was not widespread or important,
with only 5 and 6 companies respectively reporting these
types of links. By far the two most common forms of
on-Park links were commercial transactions and social
interaction, with commercial interaction being more
important. Nevertheless, Table 2 does suggest a reason-
able degree of networking among Park firms.
As noted earlier, because most analyses of S&T Parks
are only concerned with university–Park linkages, com-
panies tend to be characterised fairly simply as either
being involved in interaction or not. However, by com-
bining the two questions about university and WATP
linkages, it is possible to identify four types of compa-
nies in terms of the type of linkages they have. Compa-
nies can be categorised as having (i) weak or no links;
(ii) links only to universities; (iii) links only to other
Park companies; and (iv) both types of link. Fig. 3 pro-
vides a summary for the case of WATP companies.
Despite the relatively high number of ‘no link’ com-
panies shown in the separate university and WATP ques-
Fig. 3. Categorisation of WATP companies, by type and extent of
interaction. Source: author’s survey. Note: Some companies with links
were re-classified into another category if one or other of their linkages
were considered to be very weak, e.g. three companies with university
links were reclassified as having weak/no links, because they had just
one university link each.
tions above (just under 40% in both cases), Fig. 3 shows
that combining the two questions reduces the number of
companies with weak or non-existent links to 11, or
29%. Of these, two reported a formal link with a univer-
sity, while a third was preparing to leave the Park. Three
more had been on the Park for less than a year, and
were less likely to have built up relationships. Thus, it
is probably more accurate to say that only five, or 13%,
of the 38 surveyed companies are confirmed ‘loners’,
and even two of these reported selling products to local

Table 2
Interaction between companies on WATPa

Type of interaction No. with interaction Level of importance of this interaction (1—not imp.; 2—quite imp.; Average importance
(total=23) 3—very imp.) (1–3)

Not important Quite important Very important

Joint research 5 3 0 2 1.80

Shared equipment 6 2 3 1 1.83
Commercial 16 2 7 7 2.31
transactions
Social interaction 16 4 10 2 1.87
Other 4 0 0 4 3.00

a
Source: author’s survey.
678 J. Phillimore / Technovation 19 (1999) 673–680

universities. This indicates that the extent of non-interac-
tion is actually a good deal smaller than initial analysis
might suggest.
All but one of the nine companies with Park-only
interactions were software companies who did most or
all of their R&D in-house. Five of them had multiple
links with other WATP companies, and all saw their on-
Park links as quite or very important. WATP is an
important source of information and networking for
these companies. The six university-only companies each
had extensive links with local universities. They all had
informal, human resource and formal links; one reported
17 links in total, one had 15, two had 10, one had 8 and
one had 4. Only one was not linked to Curtin University.
To understand the extent and relative importance of
company links with WATP companies and Curtin Uni-
versity, we also asked companies, in a separate question,
whether they collaborated in R&D or other activities
with universities and companies at all. In other words,
we were interested not just in whether they collaborated
within WA but on how local collaboration compared
with collaboration with partners elsewhere. The results
are in Table 3.
Table 3 shows that WATP collaboration in R&D is
frequent and important, but not necessarily as frequent
or important as elsewhere. Other WA partners are used
more often and are more important, while other Aus-
tralian partners are at least as commonly used and as
important. WATP is more important for other forms of
collaboration, but links are less frequent. Overseas col-
laboration is significant (used by 14 companies, with a
2.64 level of importance), mainly for establishing distri-
bution networks and assisting with marketing. The rela-
tively high level and importance of R&D collaboration
by WATP companies with other companies (as opposed
to universities) is significant, and further highlights the
limitations of a linear conception of innovation focussing
on university–industry interaction alone.
In their 1989 study, Parker and Jevons (1989) argued
that WATP companies interacted less with universities
than did a similar group of non-Park firms. To assess
whether this was still the case, we compared the R&D
collaborative activities of 52 WATP firms with that of
45 WA companies (not located at WATP) who had
received WA Innovation Support Scheme (WAISS)
grants from the State Government (Marinova, 1998). The
two groups were asked identical questions about R&D
collaboration; results are given in Fig. 4.
Fig. 4 shows that WATP firms were slightly less likely
to collaborate on R&D than WAISS firms (62% to 67%).
However, if WAISS firms are considered as a bench-
mark of R&D excellence in the WA context (given their
ability to win a competitive grant), then the performance
of WATP firms (not all of whom are R&D performers)
Fig. 4. R&D collaboration: comparison between WAISS and WATP
firms. Source: WATP: author’s survey; WAISS: Marinova (1998).

Table 3
Frequency and importance of links for WATP companiesa

Partner/type of collaboration Location of partner Number reporting Importance (1—low, 2—medium,

collaboration (n=52) 3—high)

University/RO Tech Park/Curtin 12 2.33

(R&D collaboration) Other WA 13 2.54
Australia 11 2.45
Overseas 7 2.57
Companies Tech Park/Curtin 12 2.17
(R&D collaboration) Other WA 19 2.47
Australia 15 2.20
Overseas 15 2.40
University/RO Tech Park/Curtin 1 3.00
(other collaboration) Other WA 3 2.33
Australia 4 2.75
Overseas 1 2.00
Companies Tech Park/Curtin 9 2.56
(other collaboration) Other WA 12 2.25
Australia 15 2.27
Overseas 14 2.64

a
Source: author’s survey.
 J. Phillimore / Technovation 19 (1999) 673–680 679

is quite creditable. In addition, there may be other
reasons for the discrepancies. WATP firms are more
mature than the WAISS firms; they had a median age
of around 10 years compared to 6 for the WAISS compa-
nies. WATP firms were less likely to collaborate with
universities but more likely to collaborate with compa-
nies, suggesting the relatively greater importance of
development rather than research activity on WATP. Of
the collaborators, WATP companies were more WA-ori-
ented in their collaborative activities with both univer-
sities and companies. Table 3 suggests that WATP is at
least partly responsible for this result.
tory of IASP member companies) should provide new
interactive prospects and tangible ‘value-added’ for
being located on WATP.
A final area for further investigation might be to con-
sider in more detail the role of larger firms on WATP
in promoting on-Park interaction. The survey showed
that the larger companies on WATP (i.e. those with 80
or more employees or those who were part of a larger
international group) were not especially strong local net-
workers. Encouraging these companies to share their
expertise, knowledge and contacts would be very useful
for the further promotion of information networks and
productive interaction at WATP.

4. Conclusion

The survey results show that significant interaction is

taking place both within WATP and between WATP Acknowledgements
occupants and Curtin University. Specific policy sugges-
tions such as permitting manufacturing, having a more
This article is a revised and extended version of a
active park management, and de-emphasising uni-
paper originally presented to the XV IASP World Con-
dimensional technology transfer mechanisms (i.e. from
ference on Science and Technology Parks in Perth,
university researchers to Park-based companies) have
Western Australia in October 1998. It was partly funded
been taken up and seem to be having a positive effect
by a grant from Murdoch University. The author
at WATP.
received invaluable research assistance from Jim Altham
While university–Park interaction is apparently less
and David Coggin, and would also like to acknowledge
than for a comparable park in Surrey, disaggregated
the help of Peter Why, the Manager of WA Technology
analysis which takes into account inter-company interac-
Park and current President of the IASP.
tion reveals a more complex picture. It shows that most
companies on WATP are not ‘islands’ of innovation but
do indeed form networks with others in close geographi-
cal proximity, and find this interaction to be important.
This finding is counter to the perception of technology Appendix A. Technology Park, Western Australia
parks put forward by Joseph, Parker and Jevons, Vedov-
ello and others. This suggest that just as we need to jetti-
son the linear view of innovation in theory, so too should
we broaden our view of innovation in practice by also
looking at within-Park linkages when evaluating Parks.
For similar reasons, we should also not assume that
‘one size fits all’ in terms of how technology transfer
actually works around technology parks. Companies dif-
fer markedly in the type and pattern of interactive behav-
iour they are engaged in; some are mainly Park-focused
while others are more university-linked; still others are
both, and very few are neither.
This does not mean, of course, that the situation at
WATP could not be improved. While the survey also
revealed that about half of the companies on WATP had
been assisted by Park management, quite a few compa-
nies indicated that they wanted more opportunities to
meet and interact with other Park companies. A small
but significant number had moved to WATP expecting
interaction with Curtin and other Park companies, but
had not yet had these expectations realised. Initiatives
such as the planned technology precinct should assist,
while the establishment of IASPNet (a web-based direc-
680 J. Phillimore / Technovation 19 (1999) 673–680
Technology Park was created in 1985 to encourage and
assist those organisations engaged in a high level of
research and development and marketing of new techno-
logies. Since it was established, the Western Australian
Technology Park has become the most successful devel-
opment of its kind in Australia.
More than 60 organisations with about 1400
employees and an annual turnover of A$170 million
have taken advantage of the facilities, central location
and environmentally favourable conditions offered by
the Park.
A.1. Location
The Park is right at the hub of a thriving business
and student community in Bentley, adjacent to Curtin
University of Technology and less than 6 km from the
centre of Perth, Western Australia’s capital city. The
area is also home to a number of government organis-
The author has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. All in-text references underlined in blue are linked to publications on ResearchGate.
ations and is second in size only to the Perth central
business district as a focus of work and study.
A.2. The Park environment
Considerable effort has gone into making the 32 ha
Park a pleasant environment to work in. Many of the
natural features of the landscape have been retained and
strict standards have resulted in a range of interesting
and aesthetic building designs, linked by parkland which
is home to flocks of birds.
Jogging and cycling tracks traverse the parklands
while a 27 hole golf course, squash courts and a gym-
nasium are located across the road.
References
Castells, P., Hall, P., 1994. Technopoles of the World: The Making of
the 21st Century Industrial Complexes. Routledge, London.
Grayson, L., 1993. Science Parks: An Experiment in High Technology
Transfer. British Library, London.
Joseph, R., 1994. New ways to make technology parks more relevant.
Prometheus 12, 46–61.
Marinova, D., 1998. Evaluation of Western Australian State Government
Support for Innovation. In: XV IASP World Conference on Science
and Technology Parks Conference Proceedings, IASP, Perth.
Massey, D., Quintas, P., Wield, D., 1992. High Tech Fantasies:
Science Parks in Society, Science and Space. Routledge, London.
Parker, W.F., Jevons, F.R., 1989. The Western Australian Technology
Park: A comparative evaluation of its role in fostering new indus-
tries and technologies and interactions with research institutions.
Institute for Science and Technology Policy, Murdoch Univer-
sity, Australia.
Quintas, P., Wield, D., Massey, D., 1992. Academic–industry links
and innovation: questioning the science park model. Technovation
12, 161–175.
Vedovello, C., 1997. Science parks and university–industry interaction:
geographical proximity between the agents as a driving force.
Technovation 17, 491–502.
John Phillimore studied at the Universities of
Western Australia and Oxford before working
on the staff of the Minister for Technology in
the Western Australian State Government from
1984 to 1987. He did his doctorate at the
Science Policy Research Unit at the University
of Sussex in the UK, looking at Australian trade
unions and their response to changing tech-
nology and vocational education and training
reforms under the Labor Government. Since
1991, he has been a Lecturer at the Institute for
Science and Technology Policy, Murdoch Uni-
versity, Western Australia.