– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of being located in a science park (SP) on the level of a firm's intellectual capital (IC) performance.
– Using a sample of 183 Italian firms (i.e. 61 tenant and 122 non-tenant firms), and through the GLS technique, the authors regress the firms’ IC performance across various explicative variables including a dummy that discriminates tenant and non-tenant firms.
– Consistently with expectations, the results show that the location of a firm in a SP leads to improved IC performance. Moreover, the authors find that some other firm characteristics, such as size, age, and leverage, are important predictors of its IC-based performance.
– The sample is small and the impact on performance might be biased by factors related to the regional context (e.g. level of industrialization, quality of education, and science system).
– Implications for policy makers: support the growth of firms in SPs especially in those industries full of firms with scarce performance in IC. Implications for SP managers: they could “sell” (in terms of marketing) to both entrepreneurs to attract and policy makers this result. Implications for institutional investors: they should look at SPs with greater interest to find high-quality firms and improve their screening activity.
– This paper aims to extend literature about factors explaining the level of a firm's IC performance and the current understanding of the impact of SPs at firm level.
