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The foresight report by Anthony Townsend (Institute for the Future), Alex Soojung-Kim Pang (Institute for the Future), and Rick Weddle (Research Triangle Foundation) challenges the model of self-contained research parks and incubators that dominated the last fifty years of technology-based economic development. Taking into account deep shifts in the global economy, science and technology, and models of innovation, the authors describe fourteen emerging trends that will set the context for technology-based economic development in the coming decades. These trends are used to develop three scenarios for the future of technology based economic development over the next two decades.
Science and Technology Parks 3.0
In the first scenario, an incremental evolution of the research parks model takes place in a world of rapid, but steady and predictable change.
The Rise of Research Clouds
In the second scenario, entirely new networks of R&D space emerge in a “research cloud’ that challenges current models to adapt, sometimes dramatically.
Dematerialized Innovation
The third scenario, the research park models is in rapid decline as R&D becomes highly virtualized and parks’ legacy cost structure makes them obsolete for young firms.
The Report:Future Knowledge Ecosystems
Source: Institute for the Future