Welcome.

• Author: Hardin, John W.
• Position: RESEARCH NORTH CAROLINA

June 1, 2015

I am pleased to introduce this issue of Research North Carolina, a forum for sharing information from North Carolina institutions and companies about their research programs and achievements.

Research is the foundation of innovation, which fuels a knowledge-based economy: It creates new industries, makes existing ones globally competitive, and sustains economic growth. In terms of growth, economic studies have valued the return on research and innovation to be four times the return on investment in physical capital. Put another way, research-based innovation accounts for between one-third to one-half of economic growth in the United States.

Two fundamental effects of innovation drive these impacts:

* Innovation empowers product and productivity improvements in existing companies, and

* Innovation spurs the dynamic creation of new companies that create new value.

Together, these effects lead to a virtuous cycle of expanding employment, as well as increased wages and lower prices, all of which expand domestic economic activity and create jobs. A high-productivity, high-employment, high-income, growing economy must be a high-technology economy driven by research and innovation.

Innovation has many sources, but science (the creation and organization of knowledge) and technology (the practical...