Assessment of technology development activities in turkish technoparks

Abstract

In this study, a survey was conducted among the firms in Turkish technoparks in order to asses the technology development activities in these technoparks. A questionnaire was prepared and distributed to the firms in five technoparks in three cities in face to face interview. These technoparks are İTÜ ARI Technocity in stanbul, TÜBİTAK MAM Technocity in Gebze, Kocaeli, GOSB Technopark in Gebze, Kocaeli, Cyberpark (Bilkent University) in Ankara, and ODTÜ Technocity in Ankara. The questionnaire was distributed to 242 corporations in these technoparks, and it was filled by 168 companies. It was found that the majority of the firms are in the software related businesses and originated by the industry (85.7 percent) rather than the university. Apparently most of the firms are developing their own product or service although patent application is not quite common. This is also evident from the relatively high R&D spending (53 percent of budget) and the ratio of the employees working in R&D (73 percent). The university graduates constitute the highest percents in both R&D (46.1 percent) and other fields (17.4 percent). Various reasons from tax privilege to R&D environment and supports were stated as the reasons to operate in a technoparks; and the technology development support mainly come from various institutes such as TÜBİTAK, TİDEB, TTGV and KOSGEB. The majority of the respondents believe that the technopark applications in Turkey are successful with respect to both the firms (73.7 percent of respondents) and the country (65.3 percent) while about 80 percent of the respondents consider the current status of Turkish technoparks in the world as “poor”. The benefits of the technoparks for the companies and the country, and the necessary conditions for the success were also asked and evaluated in terms of their importance and their realization level.