Q: How was The Research Triangle Park created?

A: In the middle of the 1950s, North Carolina was one of the poorest states in the country but it had three well-regarded research universities, Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University. Key members of the business community came together and decided it was time to keep our best and brightest from leaving North Carolina. They raised a couple of million dollars of private money to purchase a pine forest between the cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. The location was selected between those three universities in an attempt to attract research and development jobs, and reduce the “brain drain” to competing areas.

It started with private sector activism. The money to fund the Park has always been private and set up as a foundation, but the government also got involved. First, Governor Hodges, and then Governor Sanford, in the late 50’s and early 60’s promoted the Park and helped to attract business and infrastructure within the Park. The Research Triangle Park is still set up as a foundation that still provides the financial stability to ensure its success.

Founded in 1959, the Park will be celebrating its 50th birthday in January of this coming year. The economy in 1959, built around furniture, tobacco, textiles, and agriculture, did not pay high salaries. It was a specific attempt to address both the need to create new jobs and to stop university graduates from leaving the state.

Q: Has the park grown since then? Was it mostly a private sector activism?

A: The Park in 1959 consisted of 4,400 acres and eventually expanded to 7,000 acres, making it the largest science park in the United States. The Park is home to about 40,000 research and development workers (as well as another 10,000 contractors) and another 40,000 employees located in close proximity of the Park.

Q: Over the years, what has attracted people?

A: The Park’s ability to attract workers is due to the proximity to the three research universities, as well as the largest concentration of contract research organizations and two large federal labs. The U.S. environmental Protection Agency’s largest facility ever designed and built is located in the Park as well as the National Institute of environmental Health Sciences. The attraction of new primary research and development dollars into the Park and the three research universities has led to an innovation economy that has resulted in 1,500 spinouts from companies in the Park since 1970. Presently, there is a projected $540 million in capital investment.

IBM’s largest facility that is located in the Research Triangle Park started a cluster around IT. when IBM began, it was building mainframe computers and has evolved all the way through desktops, laptops, and now is an innovation sales and servicing center with about eleven thousand employees. IBM’s location to RTP led the way for the strengthening of the IT cluster in the area. In 1995, Cisco Systems landed in RTP creating their second largest presence in the world. This led the way for others to follow suit that include Nortel Networks, NetApp, Sony Ericsson, Lenovo and others. The RTP is home to 170 firms with a combined annual payroll of $2.7 billion employing 40,000 people. The average salary for new locates is $76,500.

In the early ‘70s, burroughs, an english company, began the life sciences industry in the Park and encountered quite a few mergers along the way. Burroughs is now GlaxoSmithKline and has the second largest presence in the Park with over 6,400 employees. The largest concentration of employers in RTP is in the life sciences industry at 29%. life sciences giants like Biogen Idec, Eisai, Bayer CropScience, BASF and United Therapeutics call RTP home.

In the last five years, financial service giants fidelity Investments and Credit Suisse has announced locations in RTP. RTP has been able to attract these companies and others due to the strong presence of highly skilled data and computer technicians that are located in the region. This up and coming cluster is referred to as informatics. They are using engineers and computer scientists to manipulate and analyze data that is creating a legacy type of industry.

RTI Institute was created in 1959 to be a place where university professors could do research for other companies. It evolved into a non-profit and it has 2,600 of its own staff doing work in everything from NASA related studies to building democracy in Iraq. In addition, they are doing the air quality work for Beijing for the Olympics. This idea of creating a cluster of companies that do contract research has also been part of the Park.

Q: How has the Park changed over the years in terms of the people composition and its importance to the state?

A: One of the changes is how the whole region was branded as the Research Triangle Park. It has influenced the region’s ability to attract knowledge works from around the world. In the early ‘60s, the state’s educational attainment levels were not high. As a global brand for innovation, the RTP region currently has over 42% of our adults with a fouryear college degree. Moreover, in our three urban areas in the core, it is closer to 50%. The City of Raleigh’s education attainment of its citizens is third behind Seattle and San Franciso, making it one of the most educated place in the country.

It has also brought diversity. Since 1990, the Asian population has grown by 350%. The region is now just over 50% non-native North Carolinians. We have been able to attract the knowledge workers from all over the country and the world to work for companies as well as go to school. We were always international because of the International Faculty of Students.

Innovation is a contact sport. The Park does things like Techie Tuesdays@ RTP and softball and volleyball leagues to ensure the diverse people in the region have reason to interact in order to lead to innovation among companies.

Q: Can you describe some milestones in the history of the Park?

A: The location of IBM was the single biggest milestone because it placed RTP on the map. When Burroughs landed in RTP in 1972, they started the pharmaceutical industry cluster. In 1984, North Carolina created the first state sponsored biotech center in RTP to support mechanism for all those companies. That gave the Park a legitimate advantage that has created a place for the leading concentrations of biopharmaceutical firms. The Research Triangle Region has recently added or expanded facilities for Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, Merck & Company, Wyeth Biotech, Novo Nordisk, Novozymes, and Talecris Biotherapeutics. Most of the people who make pharmaceutical vaccines in the world have a presence here and more seem to be coming every day.

In the ‘80s, we also started a large supercomputing center called MCNC, which is the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina, with one of the first supercomputers in this part of the world to support those companies.

In 2001, the state passed the largest higher education bond program ever passed with over $3 billion in new facility dollars for our higher education institutes and much of that coming to the universities in this region. The 2001 year was not great in North Carolina however this bond passed in all hundred counties of North Carolina. In North Carolina, the importance of higher education is universally believed in and remains strong.