Tucson Local Media published on March 27, 2024

Tech, business ecosystem may be leading the way as research shifts | News | tucsonlocalmedia.com By Jimmy Magahern,

There’s disruption in the tech industry, and then there’s disruption at the workplace where tech gets done.

When around 100 protesters descended late last November on the campus of the University of Arizona Tech Park at The Bridges, blockading both entrances to the new Raytheon expansion in protest of the company’s involvement in the war economy (Raytheon’s parent corporation, RTX Technologies, is the second largest weapons manufacturer in the United States, but also Tucson’s single largest employer, with 12,000 local workers), what was most striking was how little the action actually disrupted the day’s work — other than the workers’ commute.

Some Raytheon employees reportedly drove off road to find other paths to the lot. But in the end, work at the facility was only disrupted for about an hour and a half.

“You know, we work with our local law enforcement, and they managed the situation and took the actions that they felt were appropriate on private land,” said Tech Parks Arizona vice president Carol Stewart, who came to “Technology’s Best Address” with over 20 years of experience working in the research parks world. “We’re always dealing with those situations. Every week, there’s something that comes up.”

Managing disruptions — in a technological sense — may also be key to how Tech Parks Arizona, a self-sufficient component of the university that encompasses the UA Tech Park at Rita Road, the UA Tech Park at The Bridges and the UA Center for Innovation (UACI), a startup incubator network dedicated to nurturing science and technology companies, has risen to become one of the top 10 science parks in North America.

Last year, a paper published in the journal Nature found that the majority of advances taking place in science and technology are less the result of disruptive technology — once the buzzword for any new breakthroughs that pushed pioneering discoveries through a staid status quo — than incremental advances in science supported by a strong business backing.

The researchers, including Erin Leahey, a sociologist at the University of Arizona, along with Michael Park and Russell Funk at the University of Minnesota, analyzed data from 45 million scientific papers and 3.9 million patents across six decades and ranked them on a “disruptiveness score,” with those pushing science and technology in a dramatic new direction on one end (i.e., the discovery of the DNA double helix structure), and those consolidating or further developing years of previous work (like the mRNA vaccines that successfully combatted the coronavirus) on the other.

Their discovery? Truly disruptive advances are becoming harder to find, while work consolidating incremental advances into marketable technology — what Funk called the “corporatization of science” — is now the norm.

The Tech Parks Arizona ecosystem, long a beacon of technological advancement paired with economic development, is perfectly positioned to ride the current trend.

“I really don’t know much about Tech Park,” confessed UA sociologist Leahey. “If the work produced there finds its way into patents and scientific papers, we could certainly find out whether it leans disruptive or consolidating.”

Nevertheless, she added that in the process of her fellow researchers developing their creative measure of disruptiveness, “they found that patents assigned to commercial organizations — companies rather than universities — leaned toward consolidating.”

In that way, Tech Parks Arizona, whose flagship UA Tech Park at Rita Road celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, straddles an enviable perch between the two worlds, warranting high scores on both ends of the consolidation-disruption index.

“The university took a very bold step 30 years ago, creating a research and technology park based on university specializations and relationships with industry,” Stewart recounted, underscoring the strategic foresight that catalyzed the park’s inception. “The companies come and go, based on their relationships with the university, and they have their own lifespans as well. But you want things to change.”

The trajectory of Tech Parks Arizona mirrors the broader economic landscape, with its fortunes rising and falling in response to global and local challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet Stewart says it stands as a resilient reflection of the technology sector’s dynamism, adapting and evolving with the times. “It ebbs and flows, right? It really follows the economy. We are a reflection of that.”

A cornerstone of the park’s success is its role in attracting foreign direct investments and supporting the economic expansion of the region. Recently, Micro-Hybrid Electronic GmbH, a maker of microelectronics and infrared sensors based in Hermsdorf, Germany, announced its expansion to the UA Tech Park, drawn by the opportunities for innovation and growth. The company hopes to leverage the Soft Landings Global Advantage program at the University of Arizona Center for Innovation to tap into the state-of-the-art facilities at the UA Tech Park and the rich pool of talent, resources and collaborative opportunities available in what it calls Tucson’s “Optics Valley.”

Also in the last year, Strike Photonics, a Texas-based pioneer in semiconductor technology, announced its expansion into the park’s hub to develop products in several key sectors including biotechnology, electronic defense, telecommunications and optical computing, hoping to draw from graduates of the UA Wyant College of Optical Sciences.

In a press release, company CEO Todd Doshier called UA Tech Park “the perfect location where we can converge with like-minded innovators and form new business connections,” adding, “the park’s infrastructure provides the robust foundation necessary for ongoing expansion with the flexibility to take more space as we grow.”

Already the parks have lots of companies tapping into its talent pool of 6,000 knowledge workers and 2 million square feet of Class A office, labs, assembly, testing and R&D space.

“In the last five years, we’ve had probably 26 companies that have come and tested the markets in Tucson, and we have about 10 companies that have stayed and expanded here,” Stewart said. “We program them to come and market for 30 days. A lot of international companies are looking to expand into the U.S. and potentially Mexico, and we have such a deep understanding of how to do business in Mexico here that we always make sure that’s part of the conversation. They meet with everybody they need to, from the mayor to the president of the university to business leaders to specialists — lawyers, immigration lawyers, accountants — everybody they need to talk to.”

Recently, the infrastructural and amenity developments on the tech parks’ 1,300 acres have been expanding to include hotels, workforce housing and even day care, reflecting a holistic approach to community development by addressing the needs of knowledge workers and their families.

“We do have the Vail Academy and High School on our site, so we would be collaborating with them on the day care. And adding the workforce housing will be a really nice component, too, because we’re really low on housing here so that’s become a priority of this region.”

As for economic development partners, the parks continue to work with Sun Corridor, the Arizona Commerce Authority, the city of Tucson as well as the town of Sahuarita.

But in the end, Stewart says it’s the city itself that attracts so many technology businesses.

“You know, I still think it’s the environment,” she said. “I think people need to come and experience Tucson. And once you’ve experienced that, you understand what’s so special about this place.

“I’m a Canadian,” Stewart added. “I’ve been down here for five years, and it’s one of the most welcoming environments to do business. And when you talk to site selectors, that’s the No. 1 requirement: They say they need to be in a community that’s ready to assist business after landing in the region. And I think we’ve got that in spades.”