Bringing it together.

PositionSPONSORED SECTION: WAKE COUNTY ROUND TABLE

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Wake County is home to entrepreneurs, technology giants and world-class educational institutions. Their collaboration makes it a success.

HOW IS WAKE COUNTY'S GROWTH AFFECTING YOUR WORK?

TRACY Raleigh, a co-working space in Raleigh's Warehouse District, houses and supports 140 startups. We're working on a 20,000-square-foot expansion that will house more startups and concentrate the region's innovation community.

HELMS I'm Apex's first economic-development director. We are assembling industrial sites and industrial buildings so we're prepared to respond to more referrals from the county economic-development office. We're currently certifying a 120-acre site.

SCOTT Wake Tech's enrollment is growing while most community colleges nationwide are watching theirs drop. People want what we're offering. The college is building a 94-acre Research Triangle Park campus, which will support businesses and industries in western Wake County and RTP. Classes will include business analytics, cybersecurity and data storage. It'll be home to the university's customized corporate training, too. It's expected to open in fall 2017.

HARTMANN 3 Wake County's population grows by 64 people each day, on average. That's about 250,000 people in the next decade. We need to prepare in order to maintain the quality of life that's enjoyed today.

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SPILKER Citrix writes software for businesses. It came to Raleigh by acquiring ShareFile, which is one of the regions good entrepreneurial stories. It had 80 people when it was acquired, and about five years later, it has 800. Businesses grow in Raleigh because of the resources and support found here.

HOW DO BUSINESSES, GOVERNMENTS AND OTHER WAKE COUNTY ENTITIES COLLABORATE?

COLE Companies that have explored other parts of the country say, "You work so well together." We hear that whether they are working with economic-development folks, community colleges, universities, county or local governments. I recently spoke with New York native Jonathan Hayes, who founded Raleigh-based RewardStock Inc. It's a website that finds ways to pay for travel with reward points instead of cash. His funding was locally sourced. He is amazed by the collaboration, noting there's a palpable desire for all to be successful. We see that working with big companies such as [New York-based] MetLife Inc. It opened its Global Technology and Operations Center in Cary in 2015 to be close to the universities, startups and others. It's regional, too. If there's a win in Durham, for example, we're often the first to offer congratulations.

TRACY currently works with almost everyone at this table. We attract entrepreneurs from the outside and train people inside to collaborate with the entire community. HQ is interested in building bridges between large corporations and startups. Three years ago, HQ started working with Jesse Lipson, Citrix's corporate vice president and general manager of cloud services. One of his big initiatives is injecting innovation into a large corporation. [Raleigh-based] Red Hat Inc. is interested in creating innovation within its teams.

HELMS Wake's culture includes sharing best practices. I don't want to see neighboring communities falter, because that would reflect on the county and region. Once a month, Wake County Economic Development invites all 12 municipalities...

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