Drawing from more than 25 years of research and project development, the authors describe how accelerated commercialization strategies building on advances in science and technology offer a sustainable source of wealth. They show how collaboration among business, government, entrepreneurial, and academic partners--all focusing to leverage local resources to compete in the global marketplace--is an established and powerful strategy for 21st century business creation and economic development.
This collaborative success strategy of thinking globally and acting locally, along with supportive activities such as technology incubators, research methods, entrepreneurship training, and use of networks for resource sharing is what has come to be called the Technopolis paradigm. Because a maturing Technopolis evolves as an integral component of a city, state, or larger sociopolitical unit, it promotes attention to sustainability and quality of life. Further, Kozmetsky and Williams consider the Technopolis paradigm as a process of constructive capitalism in that it utilizes private or corporate commercialization of science and technology to create wealth and shared prosperity, the value of which is set by competition in a free market.
About the Author: GEORGE KOZMETSKY was co-founder of the Teledyne Corporation, former Dean of the University of Texas College of Business, founder and Chairman of the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. In addition, at the University of Texas he also was Murray S. Walker Chair Professor and E. D. Walker Centennial Fellow. In 1993 Dr. Kozmetsky received the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton.
FREDERICK WILLIAMS is a social scientist specializing in the economics of information technologies and author of more than 50 books. He was founding Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of California. At the University of Texas, Austin, he has occupied the Mary Gibbs Jones Chair in Communication and continues to serve as the W. W. Heath Centennial Fellow in the IC2 Institute.
VICTORIA WILLIAMS is Executive Director of The Williams Group and co-Director of the IC2 Institute Project Caribe at the University of Texas, Austin.
