Making of an Asia-Pacific High-Tech Hub

Abstract

Osaka City and Osaka Prefecture introduced several large-scale business site development projects in the 1980s and 1990s, such as Tsuda Science Hills, Rinku Town and Technoport Osaka. The idea was to claim Osaka’s share of anticipated growth boosted by the internationalisation of business and high-tech development, but eventually these investments proved to be failures. The case of Osaka suggests that large-scale business site developments need increasingly to be built on premises that match the requirements and demands of global knowledge economy, thus emphasising local synergy, growth mechanisms, entrepreneurship and innovativeness.