Business Driven Science and Technology Parks (STPs) for Accelerating Innovation: Cases from Malaysia and India

This paper presents two cases of Science and Technology Parks (STPs), from Malaysia and India, that are driven by business organisations in partnership with governments. The need to locate the STP near to a university or a research institute has been considered crucial to attract firms to the STP - but in this paper, we illustrate the efforts to develop a locally relevant STP through the cases of Pahang Bio Science in Malaysia and the ICICI Knowledge Park (now known as IKP) in Hyderabad India. These two developments are anchored by business organisations that are playing a pivotal role in their development. The government plays a supporting role in terms of policy and supplying certain complementary resources. In addition, we note that the government support also provides legitimacy for the business organisation developing the STP. In the case of the Malaysian STP, we note the approach is towards inclusive development by developing linkages to local communities, and in the case of the Indian STP, one can see the development of the STP in a dynamic way changing according to the needs of the sector. Especially interesting is the foresight by the nodal business organisations in developing the STPs.