Technology Parks versus Science Parks: does the university make the difference?

Although the notion of Science and Technology Parks (STPs) has become fairly widespread, however, the level of university involvement in these parks differs hugely. At the extremes, there are parks that are owned and managed by universities, and parks with no formal links of any kind with a university. We use data from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) for Spain and a survey of STP park managers to analyse how the level of involvement of a university in the STP affects the innovation outputs of its tenants and their links with universities. We find that higher involvement of a university in the STP negatively affects tenant’s innovation sales and positively affects the number of patent applications. We find no robust evidence of the involvement of a university in the propensity for park firms to cooperate with a university or to purchase external R&D services from the university.