The Role of Policy-Making towards Science Technology Parks and the Expected Impact in National Economies: An Illustrative Real-World Comparative Case Study and a System Dynamics Methodology

Nowadays, the globalised geopolitical landscape along with the continuous technological advancements and the turbulent business global environment highlight major challenges and emerging growth opportunities for enterprises hence rendering them more competitive and flexible towards change. Therefore, in order for corporations, especially in the Mediterranean region, to become financially viable and to expand within the concurrent economic recession period, they have to focus on innovative technologies and intensive knowledge sharing and management.\n \nThis can be achieved through developing sound cooperations and synergies among enterprises, research institutions and societal stakeholders to foster research and development, diffusion of innovations and licensing. To that end, the concept of Science Technology Parks (STPs) has emerged. Science Parks provide a unique environment for accelerating technological innovation, nurturing new star-up firms, attracting investments and generating economic and social growth. Therefore, the need to dedicate funding schema towards STPs is critical.\n\nDuring the last decade, the European Union (EU) supports a Cohesion Policy via the Community Structural Funds to promote the harmonious development of the EU, with a significant share of the aforesaid funds to be administered towards regional STPs. However, the existing body of literature is lacking of studies examining the funding schema of Science Parks, while benchmarking the STPs impact. Therefore, the aim of this study is to comparatively study the role and the exploitation of the EU Structural Funds towards the development of STPs in a national setting. Specifically, we first highlight the role of STPs within a national economic and social context, and we further present direct and indirect implications of STPs to Spanish and\nGreek economies, two countries that resemble in a number of socio-economic characteristics and which encountered similar economic challenges during the recent financial downturn period. Secondly, we briefly present the impact of inteventionary policies through elaborating the System Dynamics (SD) methodology, an approach that has been extensively used in the past to understand the behaviour of complex systems over time. We envisage that our research could assist public authorities and regulators towards the realization of the critical role of STPs at a national level and motivate additional research on the field.