Knowledge Room

A world economy is closer than ever but continues to face challenges in the forms of protectionist policies, political and social tensions, and regulation. As the world progressively moves towards a virtual space, brick-and-mortar science parks, which are built to foster collaboration and innovation, are becoming increasingly disadvantaged.

These physical spaces work to provide businesses with access to local talent and shared local laboratories, which inherently inhibit globalisation. In order to move beyond borders to a global economy, we need to find ways to alleviate the restrictions of borders without physically removing them.

A virtual science park can provide a borderless innovation ecosystem to house data on talent (in the form of companies, researchers, and students), lab assets, and challenges faced by industry around the world.

This report delves into the vital realm of Innovation Ecosystems (IE) within the context of the water and power sector in Iran, employing a Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) perspective. In an era where innovation plays a pivotal role in socio-economic growth, this study addresses the need to go beyond descriptive propositions and embrace practical implications.

By viewing IE as a CAS, we confront specific challenges linked to intervention strategies, starting points, and frameworks. The CAS approach calls for an adaptable and ever-evolving perspective that is responsive to the dynamic nature of innovation ecosystems. As CAS lacks fixed points for imposing values and norms, it highlights the significance of new normative systems.

In this landscape, Science and Technology Parks (STPs) emerge as potential orchestrators, provided they acknowledge complexity and uncertainty and enhance interactions within the ecosystem. This report not only offers a new lens for IE policy-making but also underscores the evolving role of STPs in nurturing innovation within complex systems.

With two sample cases, this article illustrates an application-scenario-driven incubation model which is a practical way of helping energy transition of legacy industry from the angel of innovation ecology.

The article starts from the energy transition challenges that legacy industries are facing and pointed out that Science and Technology Parks (STPs) and accelerators could be an effective way of solving the problem. Apart from the STPs and accelerators, large enterprise could also support the development of new products, services and solutions with its intensive resources.

An application-scenario-driven incubation model which integrates the advantages of STPs, accelerators and large enterprises, are proved an effective way of driving the growth of the industry. SPIC Future Accelerator and Digital-Dual Decarbonization Accelerators are two typical cases which indicate that releasing application scenarios to startups can provide valuable benefits for both big companies and small businesses and the industrial transformation and upgrading. 

The Association of Science and Technology Parks of Spain (APTE) launched in February 2022 a programme called APTENISA co-financed by ENISA (Empresa Nacional de Innovación S.A.) whose objective was to facilitate the creation of new technology-based companies and reduce the obstacles they face during their growth, thus supporting the development of a size that makes them more competitive.

APTenisa has promoted the conception of 100 new business projects and the acceleration of 32 new nascent technology-based companies in the last 12 months.  This has set a common methodology which has been implemented in 10 science and technology parks in 8 different Spanish regions.