By Alissa Poh

October 29, 2008 | There’ll be much feasting and merrymaking next January – big administration changes aside, that is – when North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park celebrates its golden anniversary. And its leaders will also have opportunities galore to reflect on various trials and triumphs that have marked the last several decades, since RTP’s inception in 1959. 

“It [RTP] is truly an ongoing experiment in economic development,” says Kevin Johnson, vice president for business development at the park. “Our major universities [Duke; UNC-Chapel Hill; North Carolina State] existed in the 1950s; all this concentration of talent was here. What wasn’t here, then, was an economic base for which these students could have a reasonable chance of earning a living. So they’d wind up in Boston, in New York – we had no means of capturing our talent here in North Carolina.” 

Hence the RTP experiment, as a way of stemming the brain drain. The state’s business, government and academic leaders put their heads together and figured out ways of shifting their predominantly agricultural economy to one focused on research and technology. 

“I can’t tell you how nervous this place was in the early stages of its development,” Johnson remarks. “We raised $1.8 million [roughly equivalent to $10 million today], promised to generate quality jobs and facilities of an innovative and global scale – and for the first 10 to 12 years, nothing happened. You couldn’t do that today; you’d be asked to start over, or shown the door.” 

But patience can get people – and parks – places, even if the process isn’t necessarily swift. RTP’s current statistics are pretty impressive: from 200,000 square feet of occupied space on 7,000 acres of land (roughly the size of New York’s Central Park) back in 1960, to 22.5 million square feet today, with just 600 acres left for sale. The park’s 42,000 employees are spread over more than 170 companies, in an industry mix where the pie chart’s largest chunks comprise life sciences and IT. 

“Most research parks of this size are leveraged to the hilt,” says Johnson, “but because of our age, we have no debt. What you see is what we own. And here, we measure success more by the type and quality of jobs created, rather than financial gain.” 

Since 1970, RTP has essentially helped create 1500 startup companies, with its four incubators. These startups, says Johnson, were “mostly academia-meets-venture-capitalists; they got to the point where they’d outgrown their academic lab space, so they jumped into one of our incubators.” And as is true of the startup trend, some eventually tanked, others were eaten up by the behemoths at RTP (mainly GSK and IBM), and more than a few continue to thrive. 

The harvest, state-wide

North Carolina, naturally, is benefiting greatly from this economic experiment, and justifiably so, considering that the state has long been a solid backer of biotechnology growth. From its near rock-bottom position – 49th out of 50 states, in terms of per capita income – when RTP started, North Carolina is now the nation’s third leading biotech state, behind only Massachusetts and California’s Bay Area. Forbes magazine has ranked it the best place for business and careers; CNN Money placed it third among America’s hottest markets. 

For aside from RTP, the state has biotech-committed institutions aplenty. The North Carolina Biotechnology Center, for instance, was founded in 1984 as the world’s first government-sponsored biotech initiative. It has since formed several partnerships dedicated to improving workforce quality, among them the Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center (BTEC, supported by the Golden LEAF Foundation) – the country’s first pilot-scale bioprocessing training facility that serves students and FDA inspectors alike. The center has also consistently invested in outstanding faculty for the state’s universities, awarding nearly one million dollars in grant money to UNC-Chapel Hill leaders for their recruitment purposes in 1987, which included Oliver Smithies, the 2007 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. And Winston-Salem is becoming known for more than tobacco, with scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine being the first to successfully implant laboratory-grown bladders into humans, and Esquire magazine naming the institute’s director, Anthony Atala, as one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century. 

Room for improvement?

Definitely so, Johnson says. RTP’s focus will primarily be on sustainability, and “even deeper” connections with North Carolina’s universities. 

“We need to know the places in the world where they [the faculty] are conducting research, to help market this park’s research capacity,” he says. “Professor X who went to school with Professor Y, who now lives in Uruguay – say they’re collaborating to do research there on the sap of a gum tree and its impact on some disease; well, Professor X isn’t calling me with such information. It’s a communication issue, but it’s a huge barrier right now.” 

Johnson would also like startup companies emerging from North Carolina’s universities to have a better grasp of RTP’s wealth of resources. “Some [companies] that we’ve lured into the area happened by default, not because I knew they were coming,” he remarks. “If things were truly synced, it wouldn’t even be a question of who you’re going to call, but when. I’m thinking we probably missed some opportunities, because some startups didn’t really understand what we have available for them in terms of space and support, got frustrated, and took off to Massachusetts. So we have to close that loop.” 

The physical environment at RTP will also be evolving, over time, to match what Johnson and the other leaders have observed, trend-wise. “It’s less likely that we’ll sell and liquidate large pieces of property; most companies are shrinking their footprint, both in people as well as space,” he says. “Large campus-type developments aren’t in vogue anymore. Companies with 250 employees, or less – that’s where the growth is happening, and I spend most of my time finding those in that category.” 

“Into our future”

RTP can be considered the genesis of research parks – not just throughout the US, but globally. Seven thousand acres may seem like a lot of land, but in China, 10,000-acre “science cities” are now flourishing, and other Asian countries like Japan, even Malaysia, are gaining ground. “That’s where our competition lies,” Johnson says. “We’re faced with a competitive environment worldwide, based not on science, but the capacity of the companies to innovate. So because of these global transformations, we’re into our future now, where we were just kind of into the ‘now’ before.” RTP interfaces pretty closely with these other parks and cities, he adds, and will host the 16th International Association of Science Parks World Conference next June, exploring the impact of science parks on economic development, and “how we marry these two entities together.” 

It’s not all about dull Jacks (and Janes) stuck in labs and manufacturing plants at the country’s oldest continuously operating research park, either. Johnson and the other RTP leaders emphasize creating opportunities for chance encounters: “Techie Tuesday” networking events, for instance, which he humorously describes as a great matchmaking service (“one geek to another geek”); an 800-person softball league. And speaking of global influences, plans are afoot for building a full-size soccer pitch, not to mention a cricket field – the last being a recent request from RTP’s sizeable population of naturalized Indians. 

“If we do that,” Johnson says, “I think we’ll be absolutely the coolest place on the face of the earth.”