Bill Dean is director of the Piedmont Triad Research Park.
JASON VARNEY | VARNEYPHOTO.COM

The attraction of employment, higher income, capital investment, and continued economic growth to raise the standards of living drive communities to build a competitive advantage. Communities around the world are building, or rebuilding, to the new-knowledge economy with various tag-line creations: innovation communities, smart communities, entrepreneurial communities, and so on. These communities recognize the economic shift of business: Local economies rely on new development of competitive products for a global market that places great value on intellectual capital. Much of today's business focuses on smaller, fast-growth companies, built on new technology from intellectual expertise around the world.

A community, as a society, benefits from university, industry, and public-sector partnerships to build a technology economy.

Research communities know that today's...

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