New angle: the triangle region plans to stay on top.

• Position: REGIONAL FOCUS: SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION, creation of research parks

Nearly 50 years ago, leaders from business, academia and industry came together with a vision of creating a research park between Duke University in Durham, N.C. State University in Raleigh and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Through careful planning and collaboration, that park became a reality. Today, Research Triangle Park encompasses 7,000 acres and houses more than 130 organizations, from research-and-development laboratories to branches of multinational corporations such as Armonk, N.Y.-based computer maker IBM, London-based drug manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline and San Jose, Calif.-based router maker Cisco Systems.

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About 40,000 people work in RTP, where the average salary is $56,000. Last May, Forbes magazine rated the park the nation's second-best place for business--just one of many accolades the Triangle region has garnered in recent years. And a collaboration similar to the earlier one is under way to ensure that RTP and the surrounding region remain competitive and prosperous.

In March, Triangle leaders unveiled a five-year, $5 million strategic plan called Staying on Top: Winning the Job Wars of the Future. The Research Triangle Regional Partnership, which promotes economic development in the 13-county Triangle region, is spearheading the initiative with 45 institutional partners.

But this isn't some pie-in-the-sky intellectual exercise. It comes with concrete numbers. The goal is to create 100,000 jobs and increase employment in each of the partnership's 13 counties--Chatham, Durham, Franklin, Granville, Harnett, Johnston, Lee, Moore, Orange, Person, Vance, Wake and Warren--by nurturing 10 key industry clusters.

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"When we look to the future, amidst considerable uncertainty, some economic realities seem clear," says former Gov. Jim Hunt, chairman of the 37-member regional task force that developed the strategy. "We are entering a time of increasing global competition for new jobs and investment. That competition will be fierce, and there will be regions of the world that win--where standards of living will rise and jobs will be plentiful--and regions that lose. We believe we can improve our region's chances of economic success through collaboration, education, innovation and action."

UNC President Molly Broad, also a task-force member, says the plan recognizes the key role the region's research universities--UNC Chapel Hill, Duke and N.C. State--play in economic development. "The research-and-development capacity and the collaboration among our universities, corporations and government labs make the Research Triangle region a leader in technologies that will shape the world," she says. "We intend to capitalize on these important assets to ensure our economic future."

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Along with its universities, the region has other assets, not least of which is the global reputation of RTP. Furthermore, companies in the park draw ample research and development funding from sources such as the National Institutes of Health. The region offers vast worker-training resources through top-flight community colleges and has a high quality of life combined with a relatively low cost of living and doing business, especially when compared with technology centers such as Boston and Silicon Valley in California.

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