In the November 28, 2007 Issue:

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SSTI Weekly Digest “Planning Innovation Spaces” Special Issue
Edison had Menlo Park. Monet had the gardens at Giverny. Ubiquitous computing had PARC. To what extent were the great things that happened at each of these localities influenced by the places themselves? 
 
Reducing that question to economic development policy terms: Can the places of great creations be created by design?
 
In this issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest, we examine how the design and planning of physical space can influence scientific discovery, individuals and research groups, and the performance of technology-based economic development (TBED) organizations. We combine concepts from many fields – including architecture, urban planning and, of course, economic development – to present various perspectives that may be of interest to the TBED community.
 
Looking at research parks, as we do in one article below, you sense their growing importance as places of innovation. But drive through one of the nation’s larger research parks and one may feel a sense of separateness, as research facilities are often set on manicured lawns physically apart from each other. These places are working but how?
 
Alternately, there are places so alive with energy, networking, discussions, buzz – whether it’s a certain café, happy hour spot, nightclub, or park or public gathering place ideal for lunching outdoors – that one can sense creativity and innovation taking place. Again the places are working, but why?
 
As states and regions across the world are continuing the transition to a knowledge-based economy, what is the role of design and space planning? Can design positively spur creativity, collaboration, convergence of ideas, and scientific discovery? Can a building designed to increase such interaction be used effectively as a recruiting tool? And can the way various TBED organizations structure themselves within their environment boost their effectiveness?
 
Join us, as we explore questions like these in this special issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest.

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Design Concepts to Improve Collaboration and Research within Science Buildings
Building structures that contain laboratory space are becoming an important component of many entities pursuing TBED strategies. Research spaces such as cleanrooms and wetlabs pop up throughout universities, but they also are being constructed within research parks and business incubators.
 
As the limits of our scientific knowledge continually expand, does the design of buildings housing these laboratories need to evolve as well? New technologies require understanding and input across multiple disciplines. Reductionism as the preferred approach for scientific discovery is giving way toward the convergence of knowledge across fields, or "consilience" as E.O. Wilson and others have called it. Perhaps the way to orient the physical environment around researchers can be configured such that U.S. innovators become more innovative.
 
An article in Metropolis magazine from February 2007 delves into the subject of architecture effecting the production of discoveries. In “The DNA of Science Labs,” Steven Zacks reviews principally the Janelia Farms Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and considers the future of science facilities. Situated on the banks of the Potomac River north of Washington, D.C., Janelia Farms was designed to encourage cross-collaboration through connectedness and space flexibility.
 
What did they design to accomplish this goal? Based on the observation that scientific breakthroughs occur not only in laboratory space and formal meetings, but also through casual interactions, the architects planned a space that would force researchers from different disciplines to constantly see each other – from minimizing the number of corridors to having one central dining area to building glass walls between meeting rooms, laboratories and offices.
 
The ability for laboratory space to adapt to different research projects, individual preferences, and novel scientific equipment was also a critical design factor. Extraordinarily large rooms to accommodate yet-to-be-invented large pieces of equipment were incorporated. So was a modular system of lab benches and posts in the floor that provided access to pressurized air, gases, electricity and data connections. That way, as the layout of the laboratory space evolved, the equipment could be interchanged without the need for retrofitting the infrastructure. Computer scientists and stem cell researchers could use the labs interchangeably or together.
 
Another article by architect Roger Goldstein in the journal Cell further illuminates some design considerations that are improving the interactions within and between research groups. In “Architectural Design and the Collaborative Research Environment,” Goldstein reviews the history of laboratory building design, describing the deficiencies of some buildings built in the 1950s and 1960s and the attempts of modern research facilities to balance functional needs, safety, ergonomics, indoor air quality, and thermal, visual, and acoustic comfort.
 
Some of the design concepts Goldstein discusses in the article include:

Goldstein also stresses the importance of post-occupancy evaluation, which in his opinion is a highly underutilized tool to systematically gauge the design and performance of buildings that are currently in operation. Additionally, he postulates architects would benefit from taking a more empirical approach to analyzing design decisions in order to optimize laboratory functionality. By incorporating neuroscience research on the effect of perception on performance and experimenting with alternative designs, perhaps new forms of architectural concepts can greatly impact the performance of researchers within future research buildings.
 
Metropolis magazine's “The DNA of Science Labs” can be read at:
http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2520
 
“Architectural Design and the Collaborative Research Environment” is available in the Oct. 20, 2006, issue of the journal, Cell, at: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867406012979

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The Clustering of Technology-based Economic Development Organizations
The theory of spatial clustering has been very popular in the TBED field for many years, as researchers attempt to explain the transformation of places like Silicon Valley and the reasons various locales are economically competitive. Practitioners have utilized the theory as a method to describe their own state and regional economies and to support the development of specific industries. As an industry cluster grows, additional benefits of agglomeration are realized.
 
These benefits include the creation of a localized skilled pool of labor, saving funds from sharing infrastructure and reduced costs of transactions, and knowledge spillovers which create more rapid sharing of information across an industry. The geographic reach of clusters, a subject still under investigation by the research community, sometimes varies by size depending who is using the term. In some studies, clusters are at the state level, while others cluster studies are limited to the regional or even neighborhood level.
 
Depending on the industry, certain benefits to co-location exist. But can these benefits of co-location be applied to the various organizations that push TBED for a particular location? Are there substantial agglomeration benefits to placing many of a state’s or region’s TBED players into one building or within the same block?
 
SSTI has selected three case studies where a number of a geographical area’s TBED communities are physically coming together. And just like industrial clusters, as more and more organizations are drawn to a central point, the cluster becomes larger.
 
Georgia Tech’s mixed-use, multi-building Technology Square is a $400 million campus expansion that helps to fulfill the research, academic, continuing education and government needs for the university and the state of Georgia. Formally opened in October 2003, Technology Square contains the school’s College of Management, the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center, the Georgia Electronic Design Center, and the Enterprise Innovation Institute – the parent organization of Georgia Tech’s industrial extension services, VentureLab, and ATDC, the university’s technology incubator. As start-up businesses graduate from Georgia Tech’s incubator, they relocate into Technology Square along with other technology firms, as interest exists in possible collaborations with faculty, other companies, and employable students. Equity investment firms and utility companies also are present in the development.
 
Besides having all of these components adding to the entrepreneurial environment, Technology Square contains the largest concentration of economic development agencies in the southeastern U.S. and possibly the nation, according to Georgia Tech’s Vice Provost, Wayne Hodges. Since its construction, the Georgia Department of Economic Development, the Georgia Department of Technical and Adult Education, the Georgia Economic Developers Association, and other technology associations have joined ATDC and its incubating and graduated companies inside a single building within Tech Square. The proximity allows for increased communication and collaboration between departments and organizations and is rapidly becoming the hub for the technology community of Atlanta, if not all of Georgia.
 
A similar project has taken root in the Discovery District of downtown Toronto. The MaRS Centre is a 700,000-square-foot complex home to 70 organizations, including several hospitals, venture capital and other equity financing organizations, provincial institutions, economic development organizations and start-up companies. Opened in May 2005, the MaRS Centre combines the renovated site of the Toronto General Hospital (where insulin was discovered in the early 1920s) with new buildings constructed for wetlab and office space. Designed as an “innovation convergence centre” where investment and capital, scientific research and entrepreneurship combine, the MaRS Centre deals primarily in biomedical and life science discoveries, but is quickly moving to new areas of research such as nanotechnology and materials science.
 
How does design factor into the success of MaRS? For an example, hallways connecting the office and laboratory space were constructed so that employees could be seen from public spaces such as an enclosed central atrium. Visually, this kinetic movement improves the sense that the complex is alive with activity. Furniture within the complex is set on wheels to allow mobility and flexibility, and within the incubator space, small rooms have been minimized which has the effect of more groups assembling in public spaces. Employees also cluster in a central food court area, which includes commercial space for banks and other services. Plans were released this year detailing the Phase II construction of the MaRS Centre, which will add 900,000 sq. ft. of office and laboratory space by 2010.
 
But not all TBED clusters have to be on the magnitude of Technology Square or MaRS. The Advance Colorado Center (ACC) has collocated eight entities within one floor in downtown Denver. Formed as a nonprofit incubator for economic development organizations in 2004, the ACC provides a common headquarters and logistical support for TBED groups and other organizations promoting growth in the state. Tenants include the Colorado BioScience Association, the Colorado Nanotechnology Alliance, the Colorado Association for Manufacturing and Technology, the Colorado Photonics Industry Association, Connected Organizations for a Responsible Economy, CSIA, the Colorado Film Commission, and CTEK. Funded by Colorado’s Economic Development Commission, the organizations within the ACC share office equipment and space and sponsor joint programs. The ACC has emerged as a one-stop shop for visitors and international delegations to receive information about various sectors of the Colorado economy.
 
So, is concentrating TBED organizations in a specific location an effective strategy? The answer cannot be a simple yes or no for all communities.
 
Concentration would seem to be effective only if the aggregation results in something better than is occurring through the individual parts. Cost efficiencies aside, certain benefits and interactions must take place that would not normally occur if the organizations were spread throughout a region. For example, increasing the opportunities for people to bump into each other all day might produce previously unrealized benefits. Addressing shared clients more efficiently and quickly could be another.
 
Travel convenience for shared clients is a possible advantage of co-location, but not always. It could be a disadvantage to prospective clients if they are diffused across the region and must spend more time traveling to every meeting, training session, workshop, or event. There are other potential drawbacks to consider as well. Competition for prime office or parking spaces and resources among the tenant service organizations, while often times quite petty, could hinder cooperation. Alternately, the possible encroachment of “group think” in addressing client issues could stifle creativity, customer service, and objective evaluation of the success and failure of particular approaches.
 
Design of TBED organization spaces – whether in shared locations or separate – may benefit from many of the same concepts discussed in the previous story about the design of research laboratories. In addition to creating informal social spaces and centralized eating places, large atriums or exterior courtyards could be used to get people from different organization to visually see each other. Minimizing hallways that lead to dead ends and building with transparent materials also may help to stimulate connectivity. Regardless of the specific design components, it will be interesting to follow how TBED organizations physically situate themselves within their communities in the years to come.
 
More information on Georgia Tech’s Technology Square is available at: http://www.gatech.edu/technology-square/
 
For more information on the MaRS Centre, including pictures of the existing and future design, visit: http://www.marsdd.com/MaRS-Centre.html
 
Additional details about all of the organizations that comprise the Advance Colorado Center can be found at: http://www.advancecoloradocenter.com/

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Designing Future Campus Expansion and Public Spaces at Universities
The physical layouts of many colleges and universities across North America are undergoing dramatic changes as more and more relationships develop outside of the traditional boundaries of institutions of higher learning. As public-private partnerships are established, additional research parks are being built on or adjacent to campus, and in some cases, empty space is designed into new academic and research buildings to accommodate future spin-off companies and incubating firms.
 
Numerous universities also are trying to productively manage the development of their physical space. The New York Times reported last month in a story titled “Sun Belt Growth Is Playing Out on Campus” that soaring population growth is drastically expanding enrollment and campus size in locations across the country. For example, seven years ago, Arizona State University was at 50,000 students. It is up to 64,000 students today and plans to grow to 90,000 students by 2020. With this in mind, balancing quality with quantity may be a challenge for school administrators.
 
Are there strategies that exist to help universities accommodate these changes?
 
Communities of Opportunity: Smart Growth Strategies for Colleges and Universities, a report released in July by the National Association of College and University Business Officers and Ayers/Saint/Gross, suggests yes. Co-authored with the Environmental Protection Agency and Cunningham Quill Architects, the report provides an overview of “smart growth principles” the authors contend will help institutions to provide a high quality education, serve the needs of the community, and support innovation and research. The report incorporates case studies from campuses across the U.S. and presents four core reasons why facilitating design aspects that encourage social, civic and physical activity by interconnected, compact and mixed-use spaces are important:

For many universities, developing the social and economic vitality of the land around the university is just as important as the space within its boundaries. Techniques for improving the sense of place include creating interconnected pedestrian corridors, developing higher-density housing and commercial opportunities for students and employees, efficiently using infill spaces during periods of construction and preserving gathering spaces for the public.
 
Producing and sustaining public places through design is a central part of the mission of the nonprofit Project for Public Spaces (PPS). One of the six important issues and opportunities facing campuses that PPS highlights on its website is the challenge of “creating places, not just facilities.” An article recommends planning spaces that cluster activities together so that a dynamic and busy place exists at different times of the day appealing to a wide variety of people. Combining various elements that would ordinarily be separated creates a busier space than if any one of the uses existed alone. Regarding another of the six issues, the integration of sustainability into campus design, PPS states being green is not only about the building itself, but how it integrates into the community. For example, a truly green building should be organized in such a way that people would usually walk or bike to the structure instead of driving to it.
 
For many universities planning to expand, knowing the structural components of the environment and planning how future developments will fit into already existing space is a crucial step. If public spaces such outdoor parks or auditoriums in adjacent buildings exist nearby, perhaps the best planning strategy is to figure out how to leverage those assets without replicating them.
 
Communities of Opportunity: Smart Growth Strategies for Colleges and Universities can be accessed at: http://www.nacubo.org/x9290.xml
 
The Project for Public Spaces maintains a website for its Campuses program, which contains examples of successful public spaces on campuses, news on development plans, and design best practices: http://www.pps.org/campuses/
 
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AURP, Battelle Release Study on Trends of Research Parks
The establishment and maintenance of research parks has been a strategy for many organizations to strengthen TBED within their regions. This strategy continues to grow, as announcements for new research parks and the expansion of established ones take place all over the U.S. and Canada. But looking at these research parks in aggregate, what can we learn about them? And what can current developments tell us about the design of research parks in the future?
 
A study released at this year’s Association of University Research Parks (AURP) National Conference in St. Louis sheds light on these questions. Prepared by Battelle Technology Partnership Practice in partnership with AURP, Characteristics and Trends in North American Research Parks: 21st Century Directions states about 300,000 people work in research parks, with the parks occupying a combined 124 million sq. ft. in 1,833 buildings.
 
Looking deeper into the traits of these parks, the report finds 80 percent of research park workers are employed in the private sector, compared to 11 percent working for colleges and universities, 6 percent for government, and the remaining 3 percent for on-site support services and amenities. Additionally, 60 percent of research parks are located in suburban areas and 60 percent reported a greater emphasis in international partnerships in recent years.
 
The co-location of one or more business incubators within a research park to house university spin-offs and other start-up companies was reported by 68 percent of the parks. For the companies that graduated from these incubators, the study found 39 percent leave the park and stay in the community and 23 percent remain in the park, compared to 10 percent that leave the region.
 
But, the study contends, today’s research parks have evolved considerably from what were mostly real estate development projects in the 1960s and 1970s and will continue to change substantially in the years to come. Earlier parks were marketed to attract large technology-based companies, many of which had few ties to a university. As the research parks became more established, they sought to build stronger R&D relationships, often aligning with the focus of the existing companies within the parks. In time, the inclusion of incubation programs and multitenant buildings to house smaller firms became more common.
 
More recently, the partnerships between universities and research parks are strengthening. When asked about the primary reason to move to a research park, 85 percent of park directors reported that access to a highly skilled workforce, including students, was important to tenants. Research parks are focusing more often into particular niche areas, with new firm support services becoming increasingly important. Additionally, sharing core facilities, utilizing technology transfer offices, and developing internships and co-op experiences are drawing universities and industry closer together.
 
What characteristics will the research parks of the future have?
 
The study believes a new model is emerging, centered on planned mixed-use campus expansions that include space for both university and industrial usage. These spaces will be designed to encourage the exchange of interaction of academic and industry researchers, with substantial space for further growth and housing and other amenities that are attractive to faculty, postdocs, and graduate students. Other future trends include:

The report also contains thoughts on the challenges and opportunities research parks will experience, budgetary and economic impact analyses, and detailed information about the variety of R&D sectors that are represented within these parks. It can be accessed at: http://www.aurp.net/more/pr102607.cfm

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Recent Research
Modeling the Impact of the Physical Environment on Innovation
Throughout this special issue of the Digest, we’ve explored how future trends in design may affect how TBED practitioners advance the field and how altering the organization of the physical components around us – from laboratory space to economic development organizations – may impact innovative performance. It seems an emerging field, one that is sought in the design community and one that may be welcomed by the customers of design services, is the practice of evaluating the spaces that are intended to produce innovation.
 
Earlier this year, a team of authors, with a wide variety of professional backgrounds from several European countries, proposed a model to evaluate these spaces in the journal, Creativity and Innovation Management. In “Innovation Spaces: Towards a Framework for Understanding the Role of the Physical Environment in Innovation,” the authors construct a transformation model with inputs and outputs, to separate the steps by which an initial strategic goal can be transformed to realized achievement. In this case, the process takes place within the context of an adaptable physical space.
 
The authors believe despite the growing emphasis placed on creating a designed workspace conducive to improving creativity and innovation, there is little empirical evidence on the benefits of this type of design. Instinct and personal judgment are driving designed elements within firm locations, not genuine insights gained from a critical or scientific evaluation. The knowledge gap they identify is the mismatch between how the environment impacts innovative performance and how this performance aligns with the strategic intentions of an organization.
 
Their model is an attempt to link these two components, which may shed light on how the individual pieces of designed spaces may support innovation and, more strategically, support the specific goals of an organization. Under this framework, the classification and comparison of differently design elements can be explored.
 
In the authors’ model, the first step is the acknowledgement of the “strategic intent” of an organization. In order to reach the second step of a designed physical space, a process of creation takes place. To get to the third step of “realized intent” where the outcome can be analyzed and possibly quantified, the process of use takes place. All of the components of their model can be described with different measurable variables, which they contend will allow evaluation between each step.
 
Within the context of this special issue, innovation has been used as a somewhat generic term, and as one further investigates the characteristics of innovation, it is necessary to further define and break down all of its components. Similarly, a step like the strategic intent needs to be further defined. In the model’s case, in order to understand where you are going, you may need to understand from where you are coming, and the strategic intent is the start point. The intent may include if an organization wants to reduce costs, enhance teamwork, enable customer input, or encourage better communication.
 
For example, if the organization’s goal is to improve team communication, then the physical space may need to include flexible workspaces and informal social gathering spaces. Alternatively, if the goal is to generate and retain novel ideas, then the design of the environment may emphasize physical and visual sources of inspiration or group dislocation to encourage deep thinking.
 
What can this research teach TBED practitioners?
 
Not all TBED organizations or businesses are alike. Some have different strategic goals, and a generic method to designing the physical environment around an organization might not help that group to reach its specific goals. Copying certain elements from the physical space at one location may not translate well from one organization or firm to another. While additional research in this field is needed, the authors have presented a framework that may allow spaces to be analyzed in a systematic manner and help to decide what design elements have the greatest performance impacts for individual organizations.
 
This article, written by James Moultrie, Mikael Nilsson, Marcel Dissel, Udo-Ernst Haner, Sebastiaan Janssen and Remko Van der Lugt, can be found in the March 2007 issue of Creativity and Innovation Management. For the time being, it can be downloaded for free at: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/caim/16/1
 
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