North Carolina's 13-county Research Triangle region added 86,000 new jobs in the past three years -- midway into a five-year effort to improve the region's competitive position and create 100,000 new jobs.
The news was announced to more than 800 people at RTRP's fourth annual State of the Research Triangle Region event on Thursday morning.
The slides from the event are available online in PDF format.
Highlights from RTRP's implementation of the "Staying on Top" plan include:
* A regional marketing plan has helped attract new companies (such as Credit Suisse, Fidelity Investments, Lenovo, Merck, Novartis, Stiefel Research Institute, Spuntech and United Therapeutics) and support expanding ones (AW North Carolina, GlaxoSmithKline, Novo Nordisk, Novozymes, Quintiles Transnational and others) that have created thousands of high-paying jobs and strengthened key regional cluster.
* The region's global strategic plan has reopened the World Trade Center North Carolina as a business-funded program of RTRP to coordinate the region's global strategy, including an intensive new effort to promote trade and business relations with China.
* The region's new life sciences strategy is supporting the long-term competitiveness of the more than 500 life sciences companies in the region and working to maintain the region's global leadership in this highly competitive industry.
* Aggressive recruitment of new air service led by RDU International Airport Authority is helping meet the priority travel needs of regional business people. Key recent wins include three new airlines - JetBlue, ExpressJet and Midwest Connect - and nine new nonstop destinations, including Los Angeles, Denver, Kansas City, San Antonio, Louisville, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Birmingham and Milwaukee.
* A regional workforce effort was launched in January to explore ways the six regional workforce boards that serve the region can align their efforts to support regional economic development. New initiatives in the coming year will focus on better connecting available workers to emerging job markets.
* Cluster networks launched by RTRP are encouraging interaction among companies and the university community in targeted clusters to promote innovation that will lead to new companies, businesses and jobs. More than 250 firms and organizations have participated. In 2007, N.C. State University's Industrial Extension Service took over management of the region's cluster networks.