It's funny how real something gets when you name it. Silicon Valley is a bunch of southern California highways and corporate parks around hyper-expensive real estate, but it's as real as places can be in terms of business concentration.
A far less complex place, the RTP area near North Carolina's capital, Raleigh, is roughly a triangle connecting three major research universities and the dozens of technology businesses that have spun off from them, thus "research triangle," and a huge research park planned there in the late 1950s, which claims to be the world's largest.
Learning how to do business in the RTP is, quite naturally, easy to do online. Here's a look at the best starting points.
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done
Get a look at the RTP's online backgrounder
Some basic facts: Across 7,000 acres you'll find 145 organizations, 119 of them doing research and 82% of multinational companies. Thirty-nine thousand people work in the park area, earning on average $56,000 a year.
I recommend: The Research Triangle Foundation runs its backgrounder site at
RTP.org, The three major universities feeding the ecosystem are the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
North Carolina State University and private
Duke University.
Find partners, vendors and suppliers
The triangle has hundreds of companies, but as a small business it helps to get deep into the largest ones for early contracts.
I recommend: The largest employers in the area include
IBM,
GlaxoSmithKline,
Cisco Systems and
Nortel Networks. Business software giant
SAS is in nearby Cary. A
longer list by sector is at the RTP.org site. The
Council for Entrepreneurial Development works to bring high-growth companies to the area. The big trade group is the
MCNC, which operates the North Carolina Research and Education Network, a consortium of research universities.
The Small Business and Technology Development Center fosters newcomers and startups.
Keep track of the movers and shakers
As might be expected, a busy place like RTP attracts a lot of boosters. Most talk a lot on the Web about what's going on, who's going where and what matters.
I recommend: Venture capitalist
Jason Caplain's blog is plenty busy.
TechJournalSouth has an "NC" channel, and the major local daily is Raleigh's
News and Observer, one of the first traditional newspapers to go online.
Relocating to Raleigh
The area actively recruits new businesses, particularly in tech and biotech, but many people move there as much for the lifestyle as the typical corporate tour.
I recommend: Money magazine rated Raleigh and nearby Cary highly in its annual "best places to live" ranking, and
Forbes named them among the best for careers and business. The
Raleigh Convention and Visitor's Bureau obviously would agree with the magazine, as would the
Raleigh Chamber of Commerce.
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