Techoparks as an actor of regional development: An evaluation on Turkey

Abstract

Technological advances are undoubtedly the playing the most significant and crucial role in today’s competitive circumstances. For the last century, technology, along with land, labor, capital and entrepreneurship, has embedded itself in factors of production. Other than that, it has gained outweighed power on the other factors. To become a global competitive actor, regions need to produce high value created products by using their own technological power and innovativeness. Therefore, replicating or importing the existing technology is, to some extent, a consequence for developing countries to fall behind in development process in the long-run. In order to establish a sustainable development strategy, inventing the latest technology is inevitable. Technoparks are the intermediaries which transfers the university based research and educational power to the market needs and technology intensive industries. Thus, their importance on regional development in Turkey is examined and further recommendations are discussed. © 2015, ASERS Publishing House. All rights reserved.