21 Century
Infrastructure
st
As a small state, West Virginia is fortunate to have two technology parks: the
I-79 Technology Park in Fairmont and the
West Virginia Regional Technology Park
in South Charleston. Within these tech
parks, leadership is hard at work promoting the high-tech industry in the Mountain
State by building infrastructure to draw
in national and federal businesses, supporting the creation and launch of small
high-tech businesses, encouraging innovation and making a case for the opportunities this industry holds for West Virginia.
For the research and technology issue,
West Virginia Executive asked Jim Estep,
president and CEO of the High Technology Foundation, and Dr. Rusty Kruzelock,
executive director and CEO of the West
Virginia Regional Technology Park, to
provide an update on these two parks.
Here, these industry leaders share the importance of these parks, what’s happening
at their locations, what they are working
on and what they hope will come of the
high-tech industry in West Virginia.
West Virginia’s
Technology Parks
I-79 Technology
Park
Jim Estep
High Technology Foundation
In North Central West Virginia, we have
spent the last two decades attempting to
claw our way into the national technology
sector. We at the High Technology Foundation want West Virginia to become a leader
in the evolving knowledge economy, and
while our efforts have indeed contributed to
that objective, there is still so much to do.
Successful economic diversification
requires that a state or region enable
multiple industries. Ideally, if one particular sector goes through a bad time
or even collapses, the other sectors can
keep the overall state economy stable.
This is accomplished through a carefully
The I-79 Technology Park in Fairmont.
implemented framework of public policy,
recruitment and retention of strategically
identified sectors and strategic investment
in infrastructure.
A fundamental principle of economic
diversification related to recruiting new
industrial sectors is that a business case
must be established that makes the state
or region economically attractive to the
targeted sector. For more than 16 years,
the High Technology Foundation has
centered its efforts on the creation of a
regional business case that would attract
technology and knowledge sector companies. Our efforts have focused on an
approach called the federal anchor model,
which is a model based on the presence
of a growing number of federal operations located around the north central
region. Consider that when a f ederal operation comes to the area, such as the FBI’s
Criminal Justice Information Service in
Clarksburg, they typically buy land and
construct facilities. In addition to hiring
locally, they also provide lucrative contracting opportunities.
These contracting opportunities have
the effect of creating the desired business
case for companies to cluster around the
respective federal operation. The more
contracting opportunities, the more companies want to be near the federal operation. The larger we can grow the critical
mass of this ecosystem of federal operations and businesses, the closer we get to
a new economic sector in West Virginia.
www.wvexecutive.com
summer 2016
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