When Terry Stepien, president of Sybase iAnywhere, moved the firm to the University of Waterloo’s Research and Technology Park as one of its first tenants in 2005, he was merely hoping for better access to the school’s legions of software developers.
Unbeknownst to Mr. Stepien, moving the database management software firm, a subsidiary of Sybase Inc., to the 120-acre park would provide a plethora of business benefits beyond those he’d envisioned – namely, access to an entire community of like-minded tech companies.
“The real estate has to be there, you have to have that in place, but it’s only one of about a dozen ingredients you have to have to make one of these parks work,” Mr. Stepien says.
As the demand for skilled workers in knowledge-based industries grows, high-tech firms such as Sybase are being joined by scores of other leading Canadian and international companies clamouring for space on any of the 25 university campus-based or affiliated research parks across the country.
Universities, on the other hand, are looking for ways to remain sustainable by producing relevant research and workers trained to meet industry’s needs.
To the chagrin of some academic purists, these research parks blur the lines separating academia from corporate Canada. Optimists say the parks provide a way for the two sides to share ideas and flourish.
Either way, they offer a unique atmosphere for business. As the saying goes, once you’ve seen one research park, you’ve seen one – each has its own features.
Parks do, however, share some traits. They are typically funded in part by federal, provincial and local governments, along with the private sector. Buildings are usually built and operated by the universities, or, as in the University of Waterloo’s case, by developers who negotiate long-term land leases with the school.
In almost every instance, universities pick the tenants to ensure an ideal mix—often a combination of large and smaller firms who stay for as little as a year or, as in Sybase’s case, half a decade or more. They are likely to be focused on research and development with a handful of complementary service providers such as law firms thrown in the mix.
The 10-building University of Waterloo park hosts more than 50 companies including BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, search-engine behemoth Google and enterprise content management software-maker Open Text Corp., along with about 25 startups.
Many of the buildings have been built to reflect the innovative and dynamic nature of their occupants, says Laird Robertson, a principal at Toronto-based Robertson Simmons Architects.
The Robertson Simmons-designed Accelerator Centre, for example, was decorated with exposed and unfinished elements to convey the idea of change and constant innovation. Movable partitions allow suites to be configured as tenants change or grow.
But the question remains: Why put a business on university-owned land when equivalent space exists elsewhere?
The answer is the availability of talent.
“I listen to C-level executives from Canada and the U.S. explain what their pain is, and every meeting is the same,” says Carol Stewart, business development manager for the University of Waterloo Research and Technology Park, and president of the Canadian Association of University Research Parks. “It’s about finding talent,” she adds of the tech and engineering all-stars these tenants so desperately seek.
Tenants at parks such as Waterloo’s can easily tap the school’s world-renowned co-op program, plucking students out of university to save recruiting costs.
“About 95 per cent of our development team in Waterloo are University of Waterloo graduates,” Mr. Stepien says of the roughly 120 co-op students accepted by his 350-person firm each year.
Then there’s access to cutting-edge research. Sybase’s staffers regularly attend university-programmed seminars and work with researchers from the school.
Another benefit lies in the very community that a research park creates and nurtures. Mr. Stepien points out that with RIM and Open Text on Sybase’s doorstep, new business opportunities are constantly emerging.
