With 90 percent of space available to tenants at the Thailand Science Park (TSP) taken up by companies engaged in research and development (R&D) or related activities, the national research hub just north of Rangsit is now poised to embark on a much-delayed expansion as it plays catch-up with rival science parks that have sprung up elsewhere around the region.
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 R&D.
The country needs the Science Park because it cannot compete on cheap labor any longer, she said. "With globalization, 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 percent to 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 center and four national centers--the National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (Biotec), the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (Nectec), the National Metal and Materials Technology Center (Mtec) and the National Nanotechnology Center (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 authorized only one to be built.
After that set-back, Prof Chachanat, who is also NSTDA vice president, said that last year the TMC had decided not to ask for the six remaining buildings and instead had put them together into one big building, which it won permission to build.
This will be 120,000 square meters 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. P
rof 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 specialized 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 noted, 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 characterizes TSP as a "Nikhom Wichai" (research estate) where a company wanting to do R&D 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
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