Do science parks sustain or trigger innovation? Empirical evidence from Italy

The effectiveness of science parks in fostering tenants' innovative performance is still an open issue. The literature is not conclusive on whether these structures trigger and provide active support to firms' innovation and to the development of successful research networks, or are simply the result of local political interests, with no effective impact on tenants. Relying on an original dataset on 26 Italian science parks, 470 firms located in the parks and a matched group of 511 firms outside the parks, we study the impact of science parks on firms' innovative performance and investigate what features make science parks effective, putting particular emphasis on the role of research networks. We find that: (i) firms' innovative performance is stronger for tenants than for off-park firms; (ii) the intensity of innovative activity depends upon the strength of the research networks; (iii) the positive effect of science parks on innovation holds for firms that are already innovative, while there is no positive effect of being in the park for firms without patents. From a policy perspective, our results suggest that the initiatives promoting the activities of science parks can be effective only on a selected group of very innovative firms.