Abstract:

The technological based economies need well-qualified and well-rounded human capital to increase strategically and systematically innovation: hence, the best universities are playing important and crucial roles in choosing right talents. However, after the graduation from the undergraduate and post-graduate studies, the new highly simulative job ecosystems should be needed foster innovation based economies. In that way, the technology parks, particularly those, which are close to the universities, have become very critical to attract talents and to sustain consistent development. Consequently, the policies and the strategies of higher education administration have become very important to attract new talents as brain gain or to lose talent as brain drain.

In this study, how the policies and the strategies of higher education administration at different technology parks can affect on attracting or losing the talents is analyzed as a research question. Therefore, the universities administration policies, strategies, and even roles at the technology parks as provocative environments are critically questioned on increasing innovation-based economies.

Using a mixed-qualitative-method, this study aims at understanding how some technology parks are attracting talents, while some others are loosing due to the differences of the higher education policies, strategies, and roles. By analyzing critically the background of the three universities technology parks in Turkey comparing in the US, it is hoped to understand:
(1) the existence situation of the higher education administration through the technology parks in order to gain the talent or vice versa, including individual earnings,
(2) perceptions of key stakeholders (n=24) (e.g. higher education administration, technology parks executives, researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students).

The best universities, seen even in the ranking list, have specific technology parks in which they attract attraction talents since they have well-developed ecosystems for innovation oriented research ecosystems. However, those which do not have well-organized relationship with the technology parks, particularly in incubation, they lose their talents. In this case, the income is not even among the first five reasons. The talents prefer to mobilize and circulate in those universities where the higher education policies, strategies, and roles are well structured with rich values, such as entrepreneurship, visibility, accessibility, and affordability. The studies show that the background of the two universities technology parks in Turkey comparing in the US has the same structure due to the fact that they have tried to use the same higher education management systems, particularly in accountability and transparency of the talents. On the other hand, one of them does not have any accountability and transparency criteria to follow up the talents’ performances. The perceptions of key stakeholders as higher education administration depend on the values in the organizations. Those who have strategic models, planning, short-term and long-term policies have played better and proactive roles at the universities in choosing the right talents and encouraging them in their careers, especially with the help of technology parks executives. So, the best talented researchers, graduate and undergraduate students choose the right technology parks where they improve their capacities while building innovation capacity.

Keywords:

Brain Drain, Brain Gain, Technology Parks, Centers of Attractions, Talents, Innovation Based Capacity Building, Transparency, Accountability.