Technology Corridor
From Vision To Project Realisation
Why to ease the life of Innovative Entrepreneurs

We all know that the international competition is increasing everyday and that the life for any entrepreneur is not easy. The extreme example can be the saying for the hard working technology innovation entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley; sleep like a baby, wake up and cry every half hour. Being an entrepreneur is difficult. Being an innovative technology entrepreneur is even harder. It does not look like playing European football game. The name of this game is American football, it is ruthless. To score a touchdown the player faces great hardship. He falls and gets up many times. The game does not stop just because he falls. Like the saying;

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistance. Talent alone will not do it; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genious is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan press on has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race".

How to ease the life of Innovative Entrepreneurs

When it takes so much to be successful and creative the life of the innovative entrepreneur is so hard, then it is very necessary that at least the environment should ease part of this hardship in order to get positive results without wearing out too much. The following ideas, in one form or other, are developed and applied in many countries over the years to achieve this goal.

Critical Mass and Synergy need to be created for rational solutions

To create Critical Mass means minimizing invention time through creating rational solutions by bringing many scientists near to each other in research and many carefully selected companies, development laboratories, in the technology parks so that they eliminate one another's deficiencies and by synergy reach a larger total value. To achieve this end result, especially in countries like Turkey with vast distances between each city and with limited financial and human resources spread over a large area, the best solution is to create technology zones to bring together all means to create critical mass. The United States of America has about 200 technoparks and more than 550 incubators to create and nourish this very special environments. Small countries like Israel, Switzerland resembles to a technopark because of closeness of their resources to each other. Coordination of all efforts in a country, managing science and technological research, establishment of incubators and technoparks and creating critical mass centers should be given top priority if the future challenge, to be among the respected nations, will be met without a surprise.

Urban Life of Researchers and Academicians

Living conditions of the intellectual urban citizens in many countries are often inferior. You cannot work during long hours and create continuously if you have not got the proper environment for work and living. If your family complains about its lifestyle then you cannot work there for a long time even the income may be very good.

Research and development needs a lot of time, concentration and energy. If transportation to work, office or laboratory is inconvenient for the researcher, difficulties press the researcher and obstruct his or her efficiency and morale. By experience people have found out that it is better to create a good environment for work and living than paying very high salaries.

Innovative and creative environment can be promoted. The idea has to be seen as a whole. It is a kind of lifestyle that combines living, working, enjoying and even making holidays in the same place. These kind of proper environments, we like to call technoparks, can be established anywhere; high at the mountains or right in the cities. The only point we have to keep in mind is that many countries in the world are offering attractive opportunities to attract the best brains-scientists and researchers. It will be favorable for everyone to allocate the best quality land for the concept that I have tried to explain as a new lifestyle. The chosen land should have a calm and tranquil atmosphere for the academicians and researchers. Technology parks should carry an affluent atmosphere similar to the lifestyle of the affluent people.

We need to provide close contact possibilities with the businessmen, since it is through the indispensable aid of those businessmen that inventions can turn into economical success.

Why IZMIR? - Why ALACATI?

Alacati is a newly discovered ancient village, clean, virgin and sunny site, with one of the most beautiful Port Agrilia Development which is by itself a lifestyle to make it very attractive for many foreign researchers, young or old. The retired scientists of Turkish origin are accustomed to beautiful life in U.S.A. and other countries and some of them would like to come back for work or retirement. Alacati has sea, wind, solar and geothermal energy, very futuristically planned. The new water dam and an airport of 2,300 meters long is about to finish in 2000. Problems like waste, polluted water and air does not exist. It is very suitable to pursue the development of a modern technopole. It has many natural plants which can be used as a genetic warehouse which have not been polluted since the birth of our planet. Alacati has sunshine 330 days a year. These are some of the reasons that many Turkish prestige universities are planning to create a critical mass by bringing some of their activities there. The city of Izmir has been developing industrially during many years in the directions of North, East and South. We may say that the only unpolluted space left for High-Tech development ideas lies in the direction towards West. The future 2020 studies of EGEV of Izmir shows that we must concentrate on new high technologies to balance with the existing industries. In fact we have to move some of the old plants towards the east part of Turkey or elsewhere. The electricity consumption per year in Izmir region, which can be a measure of comparative development, is double the amount of Istanbul, Ankara and the whole average of Turkey with only 5% loss compared to around 20% of the average of the whole country and of the two cities mentioned.

The western part of Izmir should be kept to remain very clean, nice and quite, suitable for High-Tech lifestyle development i.e. research institutes, universities and technology production and software development. Taking also into consideration the rather limited water supply in the Cesme Peninsula, Cesme - Alacati area can, with what is available today, only support 350, 000 people reasonably well. Urla region has sufficient surface water for a very lean population density.

This is perhaps another reason for the 20,000 hectares of High Technology Environmental Corridor between Alacati - Urla to be utilized accordingly. Alacati-International Environmental Technology Park It is not very unrealistic to foresee high tech knowledge and products coming out of this region within 25 years with only 100,000 highly technical people living and working in the "High Technology Corridor" producing technical products of a value equal to or perhaps more than the whole Turkish exports of today.

What is the best?

Many years ago the military was very effective in keeping an area green, nice and clean, and it still is. 21st century does the same protection with another method. Keep it clean, environmental, high earning, high income, high technology production but most of all creating knowledge by living there, bringing together the universities, research centers of high tech companies, starting many new companies.i.e. technopark lifestyle.. There is no better protection of an isolated virgin area than by physically being there and knowing what you are doing. In the new lifestyle of today the preservation of nature will be handled by technoparks and universities.

How can profit be created in the High Technology Environmental Corridor?

It is common practice to create a coooperation between public and private companies through the purchase of a building in a technopark. Universities and research laboratories also have the right to look upon this as an investment. Universities and research laboratories having large areas of land can benefit through renting their allocated place and preserving the quality of the land. This will provide continious income for the universities which they will need if they want to keep up with the rest of the innovative world. Forestry should be working together with the management of "The Corridor". Unused land in coordination with the forestry should be cultivated and/or used for wind mills. There is a big capacity for WIND ELECTRICITY generation which is going to be utilized for financing the technology developments and the universities that is going to take a place for critical mass process in the corridor. Wind mills of Alacati Some of the mountainous land can be converted to vineyards like in the olden times. Alacati was living from the export of raisins. Main income of a well managed technopark comes from the innovation. Also commercialization of ideas created or brought from elsewhere and adopted to the market needs is highly profitable in certain cases.

Venture Capital

This is a short outline of the venture capital concept. It is a very new idea for non - Americans. There are about 1,000 venture capital companies that supports High - Tech start - ups in the U.S.A.. There is not so many examples of this kind of investment in Europe. The quicker we can introduce this idea in Turkey on a large scale the better it will be. It is never too late to start learning. We have many young people who are looking for investors. There is big potential for this new type of business for investors. In 1996 we had only 2 venture capital investments which came from abroad to Turkey. Istanbul Stock Exchange has started to register small start up companies. This new process by time will make many profitable IPO - Initial Public Offerings to float their shares in the stock exchange without too many formalities for registration. This process is very important if venture capitalist can sell their investments for exit from the high tech start up company with good profit.

The venture capital briefly, is to know the right time to invest in a high tech company when sales start or are about to start and then sell the shares at public with 10 - 20 times or more value in just 2- 3 years time. In other words, this operation of coming in and out of a carefully selected company at the right time is called venture capital. If we can teach this very interesting type of investment business to investors, then we could have great amount of incentive for the innovators and at the same time helping the country by diverting the huge amounts of idle capital that go around for the real estate in Turkey.

The price of the shares that will have a trend going up many folds, say 10 - 20 times in just 2-3 years time span, estimated from the similar company experiences, depends very much on the following parameters; the greatness of the idea that bring a much needed solution to the problem. The innovative solution to the problem should be difficult to be copied by everyone. which effects the exit price of the shares when selling out. If it cannot be protected properly against copying, the exit value is effected. Third idea is a strong team. When you buy these shares you expect that the genius behind the scene is going to create continuously so that your company will not loose its financial prestige. The venture capitalist does not normally deal with development and production risks. He would like to see the product selling first. Very long term ideas do not attract venture capitalists. They also do not have the patience to stay with the entrepreneur for many years.

Graphical Represantation of Venture Capital Concept.
History of the Technology Corridor Concept.
Chateau Agrilia Vinyard

Concept presentation work

Year 2023-Development Concept illustration (174 KB) of "The World Green Technology Corridor" took many years to develop and it is still developing with the help of many far sighted people and establishments both from the government and from private life..
Recent news: Plans and government contacts are in progress to make the start from Alacati region in the year of 2000. Application for the interested companies, governments and research related schools, universities, persons or Institutions to take place in the region and requests for further information can be obtained through us; please contact the "Feedback" of our site.




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Last updated October 16, 2001
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