Thai Science Parks: Connecting university research up with entrepreneurs
By Jon Fernquest[Introduction|Vocabulary|Article]
[Reading Questions|Answers]
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Today's article discusses the efforts by Thai government agencies to promote and develop science parks in Thailand.
The first science park, Stanford Research Park, dates back to the 1950s. It was built in the Silicon Valley near Stanford University in California under the guidance of entrepreneurs Bill Hewlett and David Packard, the founders of Hewlett-Packard Corporation.
The Thai Science Park connects companies up with universities. Graduate students in the sciences put their skills to use in industry. Ideas for future export products are developed. Thailand becomes a regional economic power.
For further reading, check out a previous article about attracting leading edge software firms to Thailand.
Reading Questions
Here are some questions to guide your reading (See answers at end):1. What kind of activity goes on at the Thai Science Park (TSP)? Is the government or private sector mostly involved in this activity?
2. Where is the Thai Science Park (TSP) located?
3. Why are science parks important for Thailand's future?
4. Does Thailand spend a lot of money on research and development compared to other countries?
5. How does private sector involvement in R&D in Thailand compare with developed countries?
6. How many companies have operations at the Thai Science Park?
7. What percentage of the companies at the Thai Science Park were foreign companies?
(Use inference)
8. How long ago was the worlds' first science park created? Where was it created? Who was it created by?
9. How fast did science parks spread to Europe, East Asia, and Southeast Asia? Give details.
10. What perceived advantages does the Thai Science Park have for companies which have chosen the TSP over similar parks in China and India?
11. What advantages does the TSP have as an intermediate point between companies and universities?
12. What example of an agricultural technology is given as relevant to the sufficiency economy philosophy?
Bangkok Post Article: April 11, 2007
WORKING TO INSPIRE MORE R&D HERE
Thailand's Science Park is about to get a new building as it plays catch-up with other countries in the region TONY WALTHAM
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Technology Management Centre (TMC) director Prof Chachanat Thebtaranonth, who oversees the TSP, conceded "we're very, very late with our science park" - while explaining how its work is vital in order to stimulate the private sector here to engage in more research and development (R&D).
We need the Science Park because we cannot compete on cheap labour any longer, she said. "With globalisation, everyone has to compete on knowledge. If you look at our statistics, we are spending 0.26 percent of our GDP on R&D, compared to developed countries that are spending 2-3 percent of their GDP - and their GDP is much bigger than ours," she pointed out in a interview.
Also, in developed countries, over two-thirds of spending was made by the private sector whereas government agencies here accounted for most of the R&D spending with less than one third coming from the private sector, she said.
"We will never, ever catch up if the private sector doesn't do research and development," said Prof Chachanat, going on to explain how the TSP worked with its 46 tenants as it pursued its mission to become the R&D hub for industrial research as a "tripartite collaboration between education institutions, the NSTDA (government), and industry (the private sector)."
The TSP began operations in 2002, after its budget had been delayed three years by the economic collapse of 1997. Located between Thammasat University's Rangsit campus and the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), the TSP houses the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) headquarters, a conference centre and four national centres - the National Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (Biotec), the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec), the National Metal and Materials Technology Centre (Mtec) and the National Nanotechnology Centre (Nanotec). Altogether, a total staff of 2,000 work there, with 1,000 of these being researchers.
The original plan had been for a three-phased expansion, with Phase 2 being to provide space for tenants, but when a budget was sought for seven additional buildings for the tenants to occupy, the Thaksin government authorised only one to be built.
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This will be 120,000 square metres in size - compared to the 12,000 to 15,000 sq m buildings on the campus at present - and it should be completed in three years' time, although since it would have many wings it should be able to partially open in two years, she said. And its capacity should contrast dramatically with the total of 10,000 sq m of space in existing buildings that can now be made available to tenants.
Prof Chachanat noted that the TSP embraced innovation in all disciplines of science and catered to companies of all sizes that were both Thai and foreign-owned, with slightly less than 70 percent being Thai.
"We cater to all, but our screening committee tries to focus on companies that would benefit the most," she said. This contrasts with a trend in other countries now towards having themed science parks or ones that specialised in attracting only foreign investment.
The TMC director, who is also president of the International Association of Science Parks (IASP), recalled that the world's first science park dated back to the 1950s when it had been created at Stanford University in California by HP founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard.
Some 20 years later, science parks appeared in Europe while it wasn't until the 1980s when they would come to Asia, at first to Taiwan, Singapore and Japan - where there were now over 20, she said.
Then in the 1990s, Malaysia joined the science park community, while China came in very late, although incubators "are all over the place" in China today, she noted.
She gave an example of how location and free trade agreements between Thailand and both China and India had benefited one tenant company that builds fuel cells and which had chosen the TSP over rival parks in China and India.
Its decision to set up here had also been because of the lack of intellectual property rights protection in China and because the quality of the workforce here was better than in India, she said - plus the fact that the owner had feared that if the company had made the product in India, it might not be able to sell it in China, while if it had made it in China, then the Indian market might have been off-limits.
Prof Chachanat characterises TSP as a "Nikhom Wichai" (research estate) where a company wanting to do research and development could come in and start doing its research straight away.
She added that "we know who and where the top guns are in the universities and we can link everyone together. We do the full circle ("Krop wong jorn") and we can grow a critical mass of human resources for this type of research because universities don't allow companies to go and work in their labs and the companies don't allow university people to go and work in their labs. So this is an ideal location for people to work with each other, alongside each other, lab by lab," she explained.
"Now we are placing our graduate students on scholarships between the universities and the NSTDA within the companies in the Science Park," she said, adding: "our mission is to see that there is technology transfer and commercialisation of technology to our tenants as well." The bottom line was to stimulate private sector investment in R&D, she stressed.
She said that a shift to the "sufficiency economy" principle did not change anything for the TSP's activities. "I think it's just the way people take the word 'sufficiency'. Sufficiency doesn't mean low-tech or low-tech economy. It just means that if you go for a buffet, you can go for the most expensive food on the table, but for just as much as you can eat. Not the whole plateful, but leaving half of it on your plate afterwards."
High-tech was fine, but sufficiency was that you had to be dependent on yourself, she said, giving the example of someone in a rural area using a hose to water their vegetable plot, so they wasted a lot of water and perhaps there was not enough water in a the nearby river.
"But if they used the drip technique, they would invest a little bit in the beginning and then they could just go and turn the valve and it would take 10 minutes and the whole place would be watered and they could turn it off and go and do something else.
"They could save all that water, all that time, all that energy, saving it for something else, and it was much higher technology than taking the water hose and going around and wasting all that water. So technology is good, sufficiency is good. You don't waste water, you don't waste time. It doesn't mean that sufficiency is low-tech," Prof Chachanat explained.
New, rural science parks will likely be approved in the Northeast and in the South, with Khon Kaen and Suranaree University in the Northeast as contenders and Songkhla Nakarin in the South, where incubators have been set up. Prof Chachanat said she was confident that Khon Kaen and Songkhla would make the transition successfully.
Other universities wouldn't be in the position to be a science park for a very long time, she said, although they could be ready to have incubators. Incubators could also be for industry, for small companies and could even be for the OTOP products so as to develop them into more industry-like products," she noted.
Prof Chachanat said that the World Bank had classified industry into four levels: labour intensive, skill intensive, technology intensive and R&D intensive. While the TSP was catering to the top level, which was R&D, another organisation under the TMC called the Industrial Technology Assistance Programme (ITAP) was trying to take organisations from the second to third level and from third to fourth level: from skills to technology and from technology to R&D, she said.
She likened the Science Park to a university in an education system, whereas ITAP, set up here with training from Canada, was taking people through secondary school and up to the tertiary level.
ITAP had been running for 13 years now and had helped about 100 SMEs, she said, adding that in the end it helped society, giving the example of a company in Khon Kaen that had been weaving silk. "The son (of the owner of the silk-weaving business) came back from New Zealand and wanted to make carpets using wool; so he started mass production of cheap carpets using wool from New Zealand.
"Then he wanted to go up-market with made-to-order carpets, where you have to have not 10 or 20 colours, you have to have thousands of colours for people to choose from and it has to be computerized since the second batch has to be exactly the same shade.
"So we got experts in there to help him produce the colours, test the colours and now he's selling wall-to-wall carpets the size of a football field to five-star hotels in Europe and he's employing over 700 people - and they're all locals who don't need to leave Khon Kaen to find work in Bangkok," she said.
"We can help these companies stay local, they create work for the local people. And now he's working with Khon Kaen university so we get local experts to go in there."
That was the work that ITAP had been spearheading before the Science Park was opened in 2002, she noted, giving some other examples. These included how an auto-parts company was successfully guided in how to make weights to balance wheels out of zinc after the EU banned the use of lead for this; how a company manufacturing latex sheets successfully turned to making rubberised wheels for construction vehicles; and how a small Thai company making instant noodles found a market in Japan after the 1997 economic crisis with the help of a Kasetsart university expert who helped to make the noodles more slippery by modifying the starch used.
ITAP has been a success story, but Prof Chachanat's account of her attempts to expand it serve as a sobering reminder about the frustrations that seem to be endemic to Thailand's bureaucracy.
As she tells it: "we tried to expand ITAP, because we knew we had a good thing here, to expand it North, East, South and West." This had been during the Chuan Leekpai government which approved an 800 million baht budget for this. But when they approached the Budget Bureau for the promised funds they were told that the bureau didn't have the money and after turning to the Ministry of Finance for a loan, they were told that they would have to go back to the Cabinet for that.
This took a whole year, Prof Chachanat recalled, but after the Chuan Cabinet had again approved the budget - this time even as a loan - there was a change of government and the incoming Thaksin government had said "we push nothing through from the old government, so you'll have to start again." Although they did this, it was never approved, she said.
"So we tried other ways, other channels, like NESDB (the National Economic and Social Development Board), and boards for raising the competitiveness of Thai industries, and it got approved again - but we never actually saw the money. And so it went around and around and so I came back to my people and I said you had better work with universities, and we signed MOUs with nine universities... where we trained their people to work for ITAP," she explained.
If anything, the ITAP funding saga is a story of resolve and achievement in the face of setbacks that reflects the spirit of the leadership at the Thailand Science Park, whose much-delayed new mega-building, once-built, should also serve as a testimony to this as well as inspiring Thailand's private sector to invest more in research and development.
Vocabulary (in discussion above)
play catch-up with - trying to reach the standards of already successful science parks
tenants - companies or people renting real estate (or space within the science park(
Thailand Science Park (TSP) - founded in 2002 as a center for research and development under the management of the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) , Ministry of Science and Technology. Its mission are to promote innovation and R&D activities in the private sector and to develop a critical mass of R&D human resource for Thailand (Source: Profile)(See website)
R&D, research and development - scientific investigation to develop new consumer goods and services, new inputs into production, new methods of producing goods and services, or new ways of operating and managing organizations (See Wikipedia on research and development and new product development, Definition Source)
a hub, R&D hub - an important center for an activity
an R&D hub - an important center for research and development activity
poised to - about to do, will do shortly
embark on - start doing
plays catch-up - trying hard to reach the same level of accomplishment
Technology Management Centre (TMC) -
GDP - Gross Domestic Product (See Wikipedia)
the private sector - companies and industries in a country that are not owned by the government
x accounted for most of y - x was the largest part of y
tripartite - has three parts
the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) - Thai government agency driving rapid science and technology development (See description)
National Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (Biotec) - Thai government agency driving Biotechnology development
National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) - Thai government agency driving development of computer technology
National Metal and Materials Technology Centre (Mtec) - Thai government agency driving development in materials and metals technology
National Nanotechnology Centre (Nanotec) - Thai government agency driving development in nanotechnology
three-phased expansion - expansion in three steps or stages
a set-back - a temporary problem (that stops progress towards completion)
a wing of a building - a part of a building that sticks (projects) out from the rest of the building
embrace innovation - accept, support, and believe in innovation
screening - checking, to make sure: 1. it meets standards, 2, there are no problems
themed science parks - a science park that specialises in an area of science (for example software or biotechnology)
International Association of Science Parks (IASP) - (See website)
HP - Hewlett Packard Corporation, the world's largest information technology corporation, known worldwide for its printers and personal computers, headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States near Stanford University (See Wikipedia)
Bill Hewlett - a founder of Hewlett Packard Corporation above (See Wikipedia on Bill Hewlett, also read this short vignette on the first industrial park near Stanford)
David Packard - a founder of Hewlett Packard Corporation above (See Wikipedia on David Packard)
incubators, business incubators - organizations that support entrepreneurs and help increase survival rates for innovative startup companies (See Wikipedia and )
Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) - an agreement between two or more nations that eliminates or reduces tariffs and trade barriers
fuel cells - a kind of battery for electrical cars (See Wikipedia and Google Definitions)
Intellectual Property rights (IP rights) - (See Wikipedia on Intellectual Property)
off limits - not allowed to go there (a prohibited area)
a critical mass - the minimum amount (of something) required to start or maintain a venture; "the battle for the computer market has now reached critical mass"; "there is now a critical mass of successful women to take the lead"; "they sold the business because it lacked critical mass" (See Princeton's Wordnet)
technology transfer - when a country gets technology from another country
commercialisation of technology - when new technology is gradually turned into products that can be profitably sold (for example it took several years for MP3 audio players to develop into Apple's commercially successful IPod)
the bottom line - the most important point, the decisive point (See Princeton's Wordnet)
stimulate private sector investment in R&D - provide incentives to encourage companies invest in research and development
the drip technique - drip irrigation, applies water slowly to the roots of plants with the goal of minimizing water and fertilizer usage. (See Wikipedia)
the World Bank - a group of five international organizations responsible for providing finance and advice to countries for the purposes of economic development and eliminating poverty. (See Wikipedia)
x intensive - using a lot of x (for example, labour intensive, skill intensive, technology intensive and R&D intensive)
cater to x, cater for - provide the things that x needs or wants
Industrial Technology Assistance Programme (ITAP) - Thai government agency to stimulate economic growth in Thailand through technological innovation and too help SMEs do this (See website, background, and another description)
made-to-order - specially built for someone who ordered it, custom built
wall-to-wall carpets - walls that specially fitted to a room to cover the entire floor (most carpets cover a small area in the middle of the room)
spearhead - lead (a campaign or attack)
latex - a rubber-like stretchy matrerial made from white liquid from trees (See Wikipedia)
sobering, serve as a sobering reminder - making you less excited or enthusiastic about something (sober also means not drunk)
x is endemic to y - x is bad and is very common and frequently found in y (for example, the disease polio was endemic among children when I was young, discrimination against hilltribes is endemic in the country's institutions)
the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) -
resolve a problem - solve a problem, find a solution to the problem
x serves as a testimony to y, x is a testimony to y - x shows or demmonstrates clearly y
Answer Key:
1. What kind of activity goes on at the Thai Science Park (TSP) ?
Is the government or private sector mostly involved in this activity?
Research and Development (R&D) is the main activity going on at the Thai Science Park (TSP). The private sector is mostly involved in this R&D activity, since 90% of the space is being rented by companies.
2. Where is the Thai Science Park (TSP) located?
North of Rangsit, near Bangkok between Thammasat University's Rangsit campus and the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT).
3. Why are science parks important for Thailand's future?
It stimulates the private sector to engage in the R&D essential for Thailand's future development.
("...its work is vital in order to stimulate the private sector here to engage in more research and development (R&D).")
4. Does Thailand spend a lot of money on R&D compared to other countries?
Not compared to developed countries which spend 2-3 percent of their output (GDP) on
R&D, whereas Thailand only spends about 10% of that (0.26%). No comparison of Thailand
with other comparable developing countries is given, though.
5. How does private sector involvement in R&D in Thailand compare with developed countries?
Private sector involvement in R&D is much less in Thailand (less than a third) than it is in developed countries (over two-thirds).
6. How many companies have operations at the Thai Science Park?
46 companies.
("...how the TSP worked with its 46 tenants as it pursued its mission to become the R&D hub for industrial research...")
7. What percentage of the companies at the Thai Science Park were foreign companies?
(Use inference)
Approximately 30%.
("Prof Chachanat noted that the TSP embraced innovation in all disciplines of science and catered to companies of all sizes that were both Thai and foreign-owned, with slightly less than 70 percent being Thai.")
8. How long ago was the worlds' first science park created? Where was it created? Who was it created by?
The first science park was created about 50 years ago near Stanford University in the San Francisco Bay Area by the two founders of Hewlett-Packard Computer company.
("...the world's first science park dated back to the 1950s when it had been created at Stanford University in California by HP founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard.")
9. How fast did science parks spread to Europe, East Asia, and Southeast Asia? Give details.
Not fast at all. Twenty years later (1970s) science parks had spread to Europe and in the 1980s they had spread to Taiwan, Singapore and Japan in Asia, Malaysia in Southeast Asia in the 1990s, and finally very recently to China.
10. What perceived advantages does the Thai Science Park have for companies which have chosen the TSP over similar parks in China and India?
a. Lack of intellectual property rights in China.
b. Better quality workforce than India. (Note: This probably needs some elaboration since the India Institute of Technologies are world reknown)
c. Trade barriers between India and China.
11. What advantages does the TSP have as an intermediate point between companies and universities?
a. Researchers in universities can be connected with companies that need their skills.
b. Universities don't allow companies to go and work in their labs
c. Companies don't allow university people to go and work in their labs
d. Graduate students at universities can hook up with companies that will value their research.
e. Technology transfer.
f. Commercialisation of technology.
g. Stimulating private sector investment in R&D.
("She added that "we know who and where the top guns are in the universities and we can link everyone together. We do the full circle ("Krop wong jorn") and we can grow a critical mass of human resources for this type of research because universities don't allow companies to go and work in their labs and the companies don't allow university people to go and work in their labs. So this is an ideal location for people to work with each other, alongside each other, lab by lab," she explained.")
("Now we are placing our graduate students on scholarships between the universities and the NSTDA within the companies in the Science Park," she said, adding: "our mission is to see that there is technology transfer and commercialisation of technology to our tenants as well." The bottom line was to stimulate private sector investment in R&D, she stressed.")
12. What example of an agricultural technology is given as relevant to the sufficiency economy philosophy?
Drip irrigation.
