TRENDS
Measuring Science Park Impact The metrics conundrum
T Luis Sanz DIRECTOR GENERAL, IASP
Luis Sanz has been Director General of the International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation since 1996. A trained sociologist, he is an expert consultant and senior advisor to Science Parks worldwide
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he well-known dictum by Peter Drucker, “what can be measured cannot be matched”, is, as I see it, an absolute truth. How to measure the results and, furthermore, the impact of Science Parks’ work, is not exactly easy, especially if someone (be they IASP, UKSPA, or other networks or associations) wants to put together the metrics of many Science Parks in a given country, region or even worldwide, trying to find common denominators and to extract the big picture about our industry. Far from easy. It goes without saying that Science Parks deal with intangibles: knowledge transfer, branding, the culture of innovation, perceptions, the entrepreneurial mindset… All of us involved in Science Parks have probably learned two things: that all this is true and that all this is difficult to explain. More often than not, we struggle to find
relevant and reliable figures to back up our assumptions and statements.
S C I E N C E PA R K S : I M PA C T A N D P E R F O R M A N C E
But the fact that it is difficult does not mean that we can dispense with measuring what we do. At IASP, we are now busy trying to figure out a methodology, or at least the skeleton of a methodology, that our members throughout the world can use to assess their performance and impact in a relatively efficient way, but also in a way that will have enough common denominators with Science Parks throughout the world to allow us to also draw global conclusions. During the preparations of this project, a number of things have been discussed that I will try to briefly summarise in the hope that they will cast some light on this issue and help