Aiming to make Organized Industrial Zones (OIZs), one of the most basic elements of industrial policies, a milestone on the transformation process to contribute to Turkey’s innovation based economy, "The Transformation of OIZs in Turkey- Manisa OIZ Innovation Center Design and Establishment" book has been prepared with the support of the Presidency of Strategy and Budget and in partnership with the Ministry of Industry and Technology and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Organized Industrial Zones (OIZs) have been one of the most important policy tools in the history of industrialization, urbanization and regional development in Turkey. The OIZs enable industrial activities to spread throughout the country by presenting the entrepreneurs location and infrastructure for investment. However, as one of the main drivers of industrialization process, OIZs also need to be transformed to better serve the needs of companies and cope with global challenges.

With these aspirations, and in line with the priorities set out in the 9th and 10th National Development Plans, “Technology Development Project in OIZs” was initiated in November 2016. The overall objective of this project is to contribute to competitiveness of Turkey through developing models that will enable OIZs to assume an active role in entrepreneurship, innovation and technology development. With this respect, the policy paper titled “Progressing Towards 2023: The Transformation of Organized Industrial Zones in Turkey”, developed within the scope of the project, presents suggestions of new models on how OIZs’ contribution can be institutionalized.

Within the scope of these proposed models and based on the goal of establishing Innovation Centers in OIZs in the documents of "Eleventh National Development Plan" and "2023 Industry and Technology Strategy", policy paper titled “The Transformation of OIZs in Turkey- Manisa OIZ Innovation Center Design and Establishment” has been recently finalized and published as complementary to the above mentioned study. This study presents the strategy and roadmap to be followed in the design and establishment processes of the Innovation Center in Manisa OIZ, which has been selected as a pilot. The strategy and roadmap have been prepared based on the assessment of the current situation, SWOT analysis, the needs analysis and field study and workshop held with the stakeholders. Additionally, design of a pilot implementation for Manisa OIZ Innovation Center is included within the study.

It is expected that, this publication will shed light on the question of how to transform OIZs and provide substantial contribution to the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem literature in Turkey.