Research park puts on a brand-aid.

• Position: Triad

When it comes to campuses where science and commerce intersect, it can be tough keeping all the names straight. There's the granddaddy of them all, Research Triangle Park, between Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. There are Gateway University Research Park in Greensboro, University Research Park in Charlotte, and, until March, Piedmont Triad Research Park in Winston-Salem. But because brand is everything these days, it has been renamed Wake Forest Innovation Quarter, tying it to the university and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, which owns most of the roughly 200-acre enterprise on the east side of downtown Winston-Salem. "We were constantly being confused with RTP outside our market, and many people did not understand that the medical center owns and operates much of the park," Dr. John McConnell, CEO of Wake Forest Baptist, told the Winston-Salem Journal. "By adding the university's name, it gives the quarter a recognized brand."

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The park's roots stretch to 1994, when Wake Forest and Winston-Salem State University moved a few researchers into a downtown building. But the real action started in 2002, when Wake Forest began a major expansion focused on attracting medical and biotech companies. The park's renovated buildings, some donated by Winston-Salem-based Reynolds American Inc., include about 800,000 square feet of lab, office and mixed-use space. By the end of next year, it will have 1.3 million square feet, but it is still a work in progress.

Its highest-profile tenant, Winston-Salem-based drug developer Targacept Inc., has struggled with disappointing clinical trials, cut its workforce more than 60% to about 40 and moved outside the park. Come next year, the...