I have the (largely uninformed) impression that the aspirations of industrial parks (e.g. the Stanford Research Park) did not play out in reality—that is, dynamic and energetic interplay among industrial tenants and their neighboring universities.
Is this true? If so, why?
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When working at several different industrial labs in the Stanford Research Park in the 80s, there did seem to be extensive interaction with Stanford researchers. (Maybe my experience was atypical? Or this changed subsequently?)
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I could just be misinformed about the impact here!
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Here in Cambridge, MA there's a whole massive software and biotech industry built up in buildings centered around MIT, many of them spin-offs and/or MIT grads. Not really "industrial parks", though, this is a real city, you just walk a block or three :)
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Right! This does seem to suggest that proximity does something powerful, though maybe not the shared infrastructure as supposed.
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pontificating but... those aspirations butted up against the motives of capitalists, who were more interested in commercializing the technology as quickly as possible
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I can’t point to specific achievements off hand but CMU has a similar setup and there was lots of interplay between professors & students with the resident tech corps when I was there. Job rotations, internships, teaching stints, etc. Went both ways
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