Expectations of companies from technopark: The case of Zonguldak province

Research and development in the world, including in all countries and Turkey (R & D) institutions where there are universities beginning of an intensive activities are conducted. It is of utmost importance that the R & D activities carried out under the university roof are transferred to the industry and turned into products. Technoparks provide cooperation between the university and industry. Technoparks are seen as intermediary institutions that ensure the commercialization and dissemination of information. The main objective of the Technoparks is to enable small and medium sized companies to keep up with new technologies, to provide qualified personnel and job opportunities, and to create international cooperation through technology transfers. In this context, the aim of this study is to investigate the expectations of the companies in Zonguldak from Zonguldak Technopark operating under the structure of Zonguldak Bülent Ecevit University. A study on this subject has not been conducted in Zonguldak before. This is an important feature that makes the study different. In this study, 126 companies were reached with the help of survey. The questionnaire consists of 32 questions for companies operating in Zonguldak province. The questionnaire was designed and tested by reliability analysis with 20 pilot applications. The results of the survey were transferred to the database in SPSS package program and interpreted with t test, f test, simple regression analysis and correlation analysis. As a result of the study, it was found that most of the companies do not know about the Zonguldak Technopark, the companies that want to be in the technopark are increasing and the expectations of most of the companies from the technopark want to get support in developing new products. In addition, it is among the expectations of the firms to reduce the unemployment problem by providing the opening of new business areas in the expectations of the technopark, to ensure the regional economic development and to decrease the import rate. As Teknopark was newly established, the results were found as desired.