Measuring the Success of Science Parks: Performance Monitoring and Evaluation

Measuring the success of science parks is not a straightforward task. The hypothesis that science parks have been successful and effective cannot be proved or disapproved. Policy and decision makers need strong arguments to continue allocating resources to science parks, the media are increasingly interested in the science park phenomenon, science parks‘ stakeholders need to know how science parks perform and what added value they create within the regional knowledge economy. Evaluating the performance of science parks is becoming a more and more important issue for the science park industry.

This paper aims to give a general overview of the literature associated with the evaluation of science and technology parks (section 1), summarise outcomes of the workshop on science parks‘ success held in Manchester in 2010 (section 2). Based on the literature, outcomes of the workshop as well as post workshop analysis and comments it proposes a matrix of key performance indicators or so called science parks‘ performance measurement system (section3).