Performance indicators for areas of innovation: international perspective

The first science park (Stanford Research Park) was established in 1951. Eight years later the first business incubator (Batavia Incubator) started operations. A noticeable similitude is that neither one of those pioneering innovation niches was intentional, as they resulted from the acumen of entrepreneurial minds that perceived unconventional usages of available real estate. Science parks (a.k.a. research parks or technology parks, or science and technology parks) and incubators have disseminated and now operate in a large number of countries, regardless of their economic level or political ideology. Science parks and business incubators were gradually regarded as prototypical innovation habitats. A phenomenon that has gradually surfaced since the mid 2000's is the emergence of nontraditional types of innovation niches: accelerators, catapults, innovation districts, high-tech hubs, technopoles, makerspaces, hackerspaces, co-working spaces, fab labs, tech shops, innovation labs, living labs and others. Although each of them possesses individual features, they share converging aims, which are akin to the purposes of incubators and science parks. The proliferation these models generated the need for a new and encompassing idea. The recent notion of "areas of innovation" devised by IASP, the main international trade association of science parks, headquartered in Malaga, Spain, contends for such a concept. (Author)