What is a technology park anyway?

By Coran Lill

Friday 30th July 2004

While the public is getting more familiar with what business parks are, confusion still exists over exactly what a technology park is.

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) labels technology parks as being ventures with research and development facilities for science and technology companies.

Such parks often promote community economic development and tend to span many hectares.

Technology parks house everything from corporate, government and university labs to big and small companies.

According to NZTE, technology parks do not offer comprehensive business assistance programmes.

However, an important research park ingredient is an incubator focused on the nurturing of vulnerable early-stage companies.

Despite a number of developments popping up in recent years purporting to be technology parks, Ministry of Research and Technology's innovation and commercialisation director Dr Chris Kirk recently told the New Zealand Herald a number of these such as the Auckland University of Technology's "park" in Penrose and a planned Palmerston North biocommerce centre were not "big enough to qualify as true technology parks on a global scale."

"In New Zealand we now have 12 high-growth incubators," he said.

"What we don't have is any grow-out space."

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