ABSTRACT
The model of scientific discovery and innovation which underlies the science-park project in the UK is, as chapter 3 has shown, one in which individual genius figures largely. The same is true, as we saw in chapter 5, of the economic aspects of the project. Much of the imagery and rhetoric of science parks is constructed around notions of individual entrepreneurship. Lord Young as Secretary of State for Employment exulted thus: ‘Science Parks have much to do with the wealth and job creation that comes [sic] from enterprise, small firms and new technology’.1 There is a constantly recurring image of bright young entrepreneurs inventing things in garages and winning out to become world leaders. The hype of Silicon Valley in Larsen and Rogers (1984) is about individual success stories; indeed, those authors explicitly point to the utter contrast of this scientific-entrepreneurial culture with William H. Whyte’s The Organisation Man, published in 1956. Much the same rhetoric has developed in the UK. ‘Cambridge is Britain’s first emerging Silicon Valley. Between 1970 and 1980, 41 high-technology firms started, many by brilliant academics’ (Levi 1985). ‘It is generally agreed that Britain could do with more people like Eastwell, an amiable figure who pilots his own aircraft to business meetings and relaxes by driving his red Porsche (fast) around the country lanes of Sussex’ (Marsh 1986c). And so on.
