Technology Parks and Their Contribution to the Development of Technology-Oriented Complexes in Australia

One of the features that Australia has in common with other countries has been the encouragement of clusters of high-technology firms or technology-oriented complexes (TOCs). In Australia, the primary mechanism for promoting TOCs has been technology parks. In this paper the purpose is to review technology park developments in Australia from a perspective which emphasises some key conceptual features of the literature in this area: Agglomeration economies of high-technology firms and firm–university interaction; the creation of new high-technology complexes; and locational factors which make technology parks attractive to high-technology companies. Three Australian case studies, based on interviews with high-technology firms, are reported. One of the key findings from the research is that if Australian technology parks are aiming to establish TOCs that exhibit a high level of interaction between the park and a host university, then the present situation in Australia is far removed from this goal.