(Rosenberg, 1982;David, 1985;Arthur, 1988). In a similar vein, other scholars have examined how individuals create the institutional environment that shapes a technology's emergence (Barley, 1986;Weick, 1990). The "institutional" perspective has given rise to the notion that technological development is a co-evolutionary phenomenon, wherein there is a continual and reciprocal interaction between a technology and its environment (Rosenkopf and Tushman, 1993; Van de Ven and Garud, 1993). The coevolutionary perspective provides an appreciation of the view that, when studied over time, the environment is both medium and outcome of the reproduction of technological practices (Giddens, 1979). The environment constrains as well as enables the development of a new technology a co-evolutionary fashion.The co-evolutionary perspective underscores that technological development must be studied contemporaneously. We cannot fully understand the emergence of technology by means of assessments after the fact (Bijker, Hughes and Pinch, 1987;Latour, 1987). Indeed, when we observe technology-in-the-making, there is very little about the process of technological change that is obvious: it involves the "constant negotiation and renegotiation among and between groups shaping the technology" (Bijker, et al., 1987: 13). Therefore, it is important to closely follow researchers in order to understand how their negotiations influence what form technology will or will not take (Latour, 1987 Bateson, 1972; Berger and Luckmann, 1967; Neisser, 1976;Weick, 1979 The first definition of technology is based on its representation as knowledge (Rosenberg, 1982; Laudan, 1984;Layton, 1984 (Huff, 1990 Weick (1979, 1990) suggests that technologies reside in two intersecting arenas-the mental and the physical (see also Kelly, 1963). At the intersection of these two arenas, is the idea of enactment where people "actively put things out there" (Weick, 1979: 165) (Nelson and Winter, 1982: 258-259 (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990;Arthur, 1988;David, 1985). As competencies become specialized, researchers find it increasingly difficult to redirect themselves to other paths. As a consequence, there are powerful incentives for a researcher to persist along a chosen path. Geertz (1973: 5) describes man "as an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun" through the process of enactment and interpersonal negotiation (Weick, 1979). Similarly, Kelly (1963) (Constant, 1987 (Bijker, et al., 1987). Reciprocal Interactions Between Beliefs and Evaluation RoutinesUncovering (Weick, 1979: 218). It has been suggested that technological development is not about nature, but about a "fierce fight to construct reality" (Latour and Woolgar, 1979:243), where reality is the consequence of the settlement of a dispute rather than its cause (Latour, 1987). Those who emerge from the dispute victorious, shape what history will remember. Others, we say, were tangled in webs of their own significance.

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This paper examines the role of university science parks in fostering interorganizational technology transfers and technological development. We first try to contrast the development of science parks with the theoretical and empirical findings from scholarly work in the area of the management of technology. This theoretical context allows us to interpret and to discuss empirical data collected from Belgian and Dutch science park firms. The data collection mainly focused on the interactions of park‐based firms with their external R&D environment. This analysis leads to two important findings: (1) the level of R&D activity at the tenants is rather moderate for most of the parks studied, and (2) the tension between ‘regionalism’ and ‘internationalism’ in contemporary R&D management. In the wake of this second finding, arguments are presented to complement and even to change the focus from the ‘miniature’ R&D network which might develop on university science parks toward the ‘R&D community’ network holding together researchers working on a particular, interrelated set of scientific and technological problems wherever they may be located around the globe. Moreover, it is argued that a unified theory on the emergence and the development of new technologies is badly needed. Only if the dynamics underlying the development of a new technology are unravelled and better understood can technology policies, such as the ones involving the creation of science parks, be targeted more effectively.

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