How does this work? How do you identify these targets?

Yeah, this is such a great case study.

Appalachian State has, as you probably know as an alum, but not a lot of people do, they have a nationally ranked program in fermentation science, right? And so that means that they do a lot of work with the local agriculture community in the western part of the state.

with apples and certainly craft beverages.

And that also translates into science where there is a lot of work in the research community being done involving fermentation science.

And so they have the infrastructure and they have the researchers who are regularly working with the local farmers and the local community.

So our hub director, Megan Coneybeer, who works the western part of the state, has gotten to know that research capability and what they're working on and was able to connect them up with Department of Agriculture and some local farmers.

Can you talk a little bit about that, about the early stage research that this effort is targeting?

Can you tell us a little bit about how NC Innovation got started?

Sure.

So NC Innovation, like RTP, I would say, is a really good equivalent case study, is the product of a combination of business and university and government leaders really thinking and talking together about what the future of the state looks like from an economic development perspective and trying to um really put ideas in front of the legislature for things that they saw are missing in north carolina um so we've seen over the last uh 50 years just 50 plus years the incredible success of rtp and this concept of in the center of our state really creating a lot of volume around technology-based activity and businesses and the role of research institutions in that.

But I think everybody can look across North Carolina and see that the regions have somewhat been left behind in in the advances that have been made in the metro areas of our state.

And so as they did their investigation and background research on what other states are doing to be competitive, I think it became clear that figuring out how to invest in regional assets at a scale that we've contemplated and then made real with RTP was something that North Carolina could turn its attention to.

The other piece of that is, if you look at the American economy, more than 50% of our GDP is generated by small to medium-sized technology businesses.

And they are net new job creators across the board.

But in order but in order to get you got to have a really good base of small businesses and small technology companies and things like that and growing them here, which is definitely an asset.