The Importance of Identifying and Evaluating Science and Technology Parks' Resident Companies in STPs Success and the Development of Companies

Science and Technology Parks are considered as important tools in order to develop entrepreneurship and Technological innovations and also to accelerate the commercialization of technology and producing wealth from knowledge in developed or developing countries. The expansion of financial supports of Science and Technology Parks" resident companies by governments has been creating new challenges for STPs. The main challenge is the probability of increasing fictitious companies, which are only established to attract government support and spend it on non-technological activities. The problem will be more serious particularly in developing countries, which have state economies, and fictitious companies are not removing automatically. The Lack of consistent and accurate evaluation system of STPs in these countries may increase the number of inactive companies and eventually leads to failure in achieving the Parks" goals and transforming them into a ghost town with just few active companies. The mentioned condition causes a waste in Parks" resources on the one hand, and in the other faces the techno­ Logical synergistic space with serious hazard. Therefore, University of Tehran Science and Technology Park has designed a new system for evaluation of resident companies relying on a decade of experience. In this paper, first we will review the experience of some other STPs then, as a case study the evaluation sys­ tem, methodology, the method of calculating indicators and evaluating the companies based on indicators of University of Tehran STP will be studied. Also, the main results and side achievements, such as providing annual activity report for companies and a detailed understanding of their products and services which can be an important factor for companies to plan their future development will be discussed and necessary suggestions will be provided. The mentioned evaluation system is predicted to conduct annually and in a way that can prevent the settlement of inactive and fictitious companies, which are only create to attract state facilities and use them in no technological affairs. \n\nThe current evaluation system is retrieved from 10 years of pathology and experience of University of Tehran Science and Technology Park in the field of interactions and evaluation of the resident companies performance, and also identifying the most important and decisive key indicators in measuring the companies" success and offering them solutions. This evaluation system is consisted of the performance evaluation of companies in public and proprietary indicators. The most important public indicators are the level of activity and presence of the company shareholders in Park, their interaction with the Park headquarter and other resident companies. The most important proprietary indicators are the technology, human resource, and financial criteria, which will be discussed in, continue. The company technology is calculated on the basis of indicators such as level of technology, method of access, the use of knowledge to create added value, the technical complexity and the innovation of individual products or services. The calculation method is based on evaluating the company technical documents, holding Q&A meetings, visiting the company product Line by faculty members and experts as technical referees and their comments. The financial criteria are calculated in the basis of total revenues and expenditures of the company, based on their official statements according to official declaration. It consequently leads to recognition of those who Lack the financial transparency, which leads to stop their activities and co operations in University of Tehran Science and Technology Park. The company human resource is evaluated on the basis of educational degree, acquiring specialization and empowerment of the staff and the duration of their participation in the company based on the insurance Lists or their cooperation contracts, holding Q&A meetings with key staff engaged in R&D sector. The result would be extraction the number of full-time personnel in the company, the percentage of knowledge workers, and the percentage of active personnel in the R&D sector. Finally, a model and relating suggestions are proposed for ranking resident companies based on their functions. The mentioned model can be used as an appropriate tool and guide for managers of STPs to evaluate the performance of companies and also the mangers of companies to identify and improve their weaknesses and strengths.