Cooperative Networks and Clustering of High-technology SMEs: The Case of Brisbane Technology Park

In today?s global economy innovation is presented as the key to economic development and sustainability. Only through innovation can companies ensure their progress and their place in the market and can become strong enough to survive and prosper. By creating a favourable environment for innovation, countries and regions can facilitate their industries and companies to become stronger, be more profitable, and generate employment and sustainability. The economic booms of some high technology industrial agglomerations both planned ones such as the Stanford Research Park and the Research Triangle Park and spontaneous ones such as Silicon Valley and the Cambridge Phenomenon, through the 1970s suggested a type of mechanism for creating a favourable environment for innovation. Aiming at recreating the dynamics found in those successful models in order to boost the economies of their perspective areas, more and more planned industrial agglomerations such as Science and Technology Parks (STPs) have been established with strong government or quasi-government initiatives. These planned technology parks expected to provide the following benefits to the tenants: increase research productivity, employment growth in high-tech sectors, extraordinary growth or performance of R&D-intense firms situated in the park, and the development of strong and operational ties between firms, university research, national laboratories and other research institutions. Many countries, including Australia, have invested in and developed technology parks with these objectives in mind. Some governments have also hoped that science parks will also help: (a) raise the level of technological sophistication of local industries through the promotion of industrial R & D and promotion of foreign investments, and (b) to accelerate the transition from a labour intensive to a knowledge intensive economy.