Technology Park In Search Of Foreign Links
The Age
Tuesday May 26, 1998
THE Australian Technology Park in Sydney hopes to set up international offices for incubator companies and other tenants through an alliance with three overseas science and technology parks.
Stan Jeffery, general manager of the ATP business incubator scheme, will visit the United States and Britain this month to seal agreements for reciprocal office space arrangements. He said ATP already had a cooperative relationship with parks in Oxford in Britain, Philadelphia in the US and Kyoto in Japan.
Jeffery said trade arrangements within the group could lead to joint research and product development work between technology companies at the four centres.
ATP will offer space to the three partner parks from its premises in the revitalised Eveleigh railyards in Redfern.
"This will give us an ATP office in each centre, which makes it easier for our companies to commercialise technology and market internationally," Jeffery said.
Separately, the ATP has signed a memorandum of understanding for cooperation with Technion, the Israeli research park in Haifa.
ATP, which officially opened two years ago this month, has successfully graduated nine companies from its incubation program, while one has been wound up.
Jeffery said most of the successful companies had taken up residence in the park as full-time tenants. He said the park now hosts 65 companies.
The incubation program currently has 25 tenants and will have 50 by the end of the year.
ATP is a non-profit organisation, jointly owned by three universities - Sydney, New South Wales and Technology (Sydney).
Each university will encourage new business outfits from within the university to seek places in the incubation program in a special promotion this year. The vice-chancellor from each university will grant an award for "free" residence in the incubation scheme.
Jeffery said a new business creation course, to be run as a final-year elective across all faculties by the three universities, would be central to the strategy of encouraging business innovation.
"We need to educate people to create their own work, rather than just look for their own job," Jeffery said. This week Jeffery will address a conference of the United States National Business Incubation Association in Philadelphia on the incubation program at ATP.
© 1998 The Age
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