ABSTRACT
The choice will have profound implications for every aspect of technopole building: for the relationship to overall economic development strategy; for the investment in associated infrastructure, both hard and soft; and above all for location policy. Different technopole policies are appropriate to different levels of development. The development of a strategy by stages, it must by now be evident, has important implications for both the form and the location of technopoles. Traditional regional development theory, which suggests that regional disparities widen during development, also comfortably concludes that they will narrow again as the country attains economic maturity. In general, economic theory both of the neoclassical and neo-Marxist variety suggests that an early-developing country will need to concentrate on importing existing technologies, by encouraging inward investment via transnational companies. Basic scientific research and its technological application now become much more important, and encouraging it must become a primary aim of government policy.
