Transcript Research Triangle Park

Barbara Bao
Urban Economics


Alternative names: science or technology parks
Organizational entities that sell or lease spatially
contiguous land and/or buildings to businesses
or other organizations whose principal activities
are research or development of new products or
processes.
• Excludes high-tech centers or corridors such as Route
128 (MA) and Silicon Valley (CA) – concentrated
businesses outside of formal organizations
• Excludes industrial parks where manufacturing is the
primary focus

Notable research parks: University of Utah
Research Park, Stanford Research Park
Largest and most
successful research park
in the world
 Occupies 7,000 acres
 R&D branch plants of
major, technologyoriented corporations

• 130 R&D facilities
• More than 39,000 employees
• Largest IBM operation in the
world – 11,000 employees

Represents one of the
most dramatic cases of
regional economic
restructuring
 NC
had the second lowest per capita
income of any state in the 1950s
 Concentrated in three low wage,
declining industries: tobacco, textiles,
and furniture
 Combination of high-quality research
universities and lack of job opportunities
led to a huge brain drain
1955 – Governor Luther H.
Hodges formed a committee of
state business leaders and
university officials to find a way
to restructure NC’s economy
 Attract industrial research
laboratories, in turn attract
production facilities wanting to
locate in the general proximity
 Karl Robbins, a retired
industrialist, proposed building
a private research park

• Failed to attract investors
 1956
- a group of private citizens and
civic-minded corporations bought out
the stock of the research park – forming
the Research Triangle Foundation
 First occupant – Research Triangle
Institute, a nonprofit contract research
organization
 Slow to attract other organizations until
1965 – IBM, NIEHS (Environmental
Health Sciences)
 Howard W. Odum, sociologist
at UNC first
to hypothesize that scientific research
activity can stimulate the economic
development of a region
 Four factors
• Park’s vintage
• Geographic location
• Size of the metropolitan area
• Presence and type of universities

47% of R&D organizations
would probably not have
located in the RaleighDurham area if RTP didn’t
exist
• Loss of 52,000 jobs

Responsible for a significant
portion of relative growth
the region’s per capital
personal income
• 93% to 107% from 1960 to 1987
compared to the US average
 Nonprofessional
workforce comes from
local sources – only 16.7% from outside
• However 48.3% of the professional workforce come
from outside the region representing an
underdevelopment of networks between the park
and other businesses in the area
 Substantial
changes in the political
environment
• Improved public infrastructure
• Changed socioeconomic composition
 Highest concentration of PhDs and MDs, but also of
residents who haven’t graduated from high school

Universities contribute to
the creation of “localization
economies” for park
businesses
• Presence of specialized
resources
• Supply of graduates
• Faculty expertise for consulting
• Prestige of association

Success: positive
difference in employment
growth rates
• Counties with medical and
engineering institutions grew
faster
 1. Presence
of university stimulates regional
demand for goods and services
 2. Human capital investment (passing on
knowledge and training to students)
enhances labor and general business
productivity
 3. Technology transfer results in increased
productivity
 4. Direct investment and technical
assistance to startups
 5. Directly attracting businesses seeking
trained labor and expertise
 1. Help
attract and retain entrepreneurial
faculty
 2. Help attract good graduate students
 3. Increase collaborative research with
private industry
 4. Facilitate technology transfer and
commercialization of faculty inventions
 5. Enhance reputation and prestige of the
university
 6. Contribute to the economic development
of the region
 7. Generate revenue through land sales and
leases
 Growth has slowed
• Falloff in rate of new corporate R&D facilities
nationally
• Increased competition from other regions
• RTF’s delay in infrastructure investment
 Expansion has slowed
• Targeted large corporations
 Top 12 largest companies employ 30,000 people
• Economically infeasible for startups
 Reason why it hasn’t been as successful as Silicon Valley
• Zoning issues, stringent building and site restrictions