by: Leonard Ferrari, Chris Larsen, Dixon Hanna, and Nick Stone

In the report, “Blueprint for a High-Tech Cluster: The Case of the Microsystems Industry in the Southwest,” Ross DeVol, makes the argument that “research centers and institutions are undisputedly the most important factor in incubating high-tech industries”. DeVol asserts, “high-tech clusters such as Silicon Valley and Austin owe much of their prosperity to research centers and universities where top scientists can release their creative energy.” Other key ingredients include a trained and educated workforce, technology spillovers from nearby high-tech industries, the availability of venture capital, quality of living factors (climate, low crime rate, good schools, affordable housing) and cost of doing business factors.

To date, the high tech industry cluster in Northern Virginia (NVA) has grown without the nurturing influence of Virginia’s largest research universities. By looking both nearby to the North Carolina Research Triangle (NCRT) and west to Silicon Valley (SILVA) we begin to see how involving Virginia’s research universities more in Northern Virginia could be the catalyst for the next technology boom.

Industry Clusters & their Importance

An industry cluster is a geographic concentration of interdependent firms in related industries, and includes a significant number of companies that sell their products and services outside the region. Healthy, outward-oriented industry clusters are a critical prerequisite for a healthy economy. Industry clusters have emerged in many regions of the United States; in IT, the three clusters, SILVA, NCRT, and NVA, have all undergone enormous growth over the past decade, and in spite of the recent downturn in the economy, each is expected to continue to evolve as a dynamic high technology corridor in its respective state.
The importance of NVA to the State’s economy cannot be overestimated. Nearly 85 percent of Virginia’s high technology companies are located within a 1,500 square mile region bounded by Washington DC to the east, Leesburg to the west, Maryland to the north and Fredericksburg to the south. The region’s technology industry includes specializations in systems integration, information technology, and technology services; it accounts for 24 percent of all professional employment in Virginia. The region employs more than 250,000 technology workers and has a population of 1.3 million people.

Comparing NVA to SILVA and NCRT (Table 1) in terms of size and population, NVA is similar SILVA, however, the percentage of technology jobs in SILVA is more than double that of the NVA region. NRTC is the least densely populated region of the three, and the number of technology companies is also lowest, but those companies employ 30 percent more employees than their cousins in NVA, and companies in SILVA employ over 100 percent more.

While the NVA cluster developed largely to provide technology services to the numerous federal government agencies and laboratories based in the Capital area, SILVA appears to have emerged more a result of a set of favorable conditions in Northern California in the early fifties and sixties: a local concentration of universities including two highly entrepreneurial institutions (Stanford and U.C. Berkeley), a large financial community in San Francisco, a prime location near three large metropolitan areas, a state government willing to make investments in education and industry, and the presence of Hewlett-Packard, not to mention an outstanding climate and the Californian tradition of entrepreneurship.

If the importance of the universities in stimulating SILVA’s growth is difficult to prove, with NCRT it is quite clear. The “Triangle” is defined geographically by the State’s three largest research universities at each apex: the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Duke University in Durham, and NC State University in Raleigh. The research park in its center represents a concerted and successful effort to build a high tech industry cluster fueled by the research capacity of the three universities

NVA is the outlier in this aspect, because none of the top three research universities in the Commonwealth are headquartered in northern Virginia. Table 2 shows the extent of research investment by California, North Carolina and Virginia in these three IT clusters. It is easy to see how powerful an engine university research has been in SILVA and NCRT, where appx. $1.5 billion and $1.0 billion are spent annually on research.

NVA has succeeded thus far with only minimal involvement of Virginia’s major research universities. So, it is tempting to ask the question: what would happen in NVA if Virginia research universities were spending $0.5 to $1.0 billion on research in the area instead of just $26 million? Would the region see an increase in high tech manufacturing, increased growth and stability of companies, an increase in jobs and in highly skilled labor? It is difficult to see a down side to putting this to the test.

The seeds of a university cluster in northern Virginia have already been planted. George Washington University has a facility in Loudon County. Virginia Tech and UVA share a facility in Falls Church and George Mason University has facilities in Prince William, Fairfax and Arlington Counties. Virginia Tech has also started a research facility in Alexandria, VA. At the current time these facilities are used primarily to house teaching programs and the total research expenditures in the NVA region are on the order of $30 million per year. With a simple shift of priorities and a willingness to join forces to attract new technology research in heavily funded areas like homeland security and the life sciences, the region could soon develop a large technology product manufacturing cluster, bolstering and benefiting from the existing technology services sector.

To achieve this, the universities and other research institutions will need to increase their overall research expenditures in the region 30 to 50-fold. This does not mean that every Virginia university needs a comprehensive campus in the NVA region, but it does imply that the region could easily support and benefit from significant growth in full-time and part-time graduate degree programs and associated increase in endemic research facilities. Promoting the expansion of Virginia’s research institutions in northern Virginia and encouraging their sustained growth and collaboration may be the ultimate “smart” investment for the common good and the Commonwealth.

top of page

CS & IIIT host Network Security Workshop

WOW: Wireless Opportunities Workshop

Annual Wireless Symposium - call for papers