Enhancing individual habitats through clustering or networking: paradox or enlightened self-interest?

STPs are of necessity in competition with each other --- or are they? If the world of high tech companies is viewed as a finite pie, to be split in ever-smaller pieces among hungry, clamouring parks, all-out competition would seem to be the only strategy. However, in a global environment increasingly shaped by continuous innovation, this may not be the case. Instead, efforts of sufficient critical mass to foster successful innovation by companies may actually increase the size of the pie. Collaboration across parks may, surprisingly, benefit each park, if a habitat particularly conducive to innovation is the result.In fact, some of the richest ecosystems in the world, the rainforests, are made up of multiple interconnected mini-habitats, and are burgeoning with evolutionary innovation. This incredible biodiversity is comprised of multiple species filling a variety of specialised niches. For example, species of orchids mimic particular species of insects to such a degree that they lure specialised pollinators and thus allow the species to reproduce another generation. Species of poison arrow frogs have evolved both toxins that they can secrete and bright coloration to warn off predators before they even get close to the toxin, thus keeping the frogs alive and able pass on their genes to the next generation. Bromeliad plants capture rainwater in their centre, in which frogs and insects live in a smoothly functioning miniature habitat. Insects, fungi and bacteria thrive on the rainforest floor, breaking down fallen trees and animals in a process of decomposition that conserves and recycles the energy of the rainforest ecosystem. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the rainforest ecosystem is that, through its multiple species and their evolutionary innovations and interactions shaping and inhabiting a complex series of miniature habitats --- rainforests possess more energy than do most other ecosystems in the world.\nPursuing this analogy, a central premise of this presentation is that new sorts of interaction across STPs may generate innovation in the sense of successful companies providing novel products and services. Connectivity across the habitats in a broader ecosystem of innovationmay increase the level of energy such that each STP benefits more than if it were a simple, miniature habitat on its own. Economic development will occur through increased numbers of companies, commercialised products and services, and jobs.