Ohio as a bio entrepreneur home vs. North Carolina

Busy couple of weeks. Got to talk with Governor Taft in Chicago at the big BIO conference there (18,000 attendees from all over the world). He was telling delegations from Taiwan and other countries what Ohio is doing in the bioscience field. These interesting statistics (compiled for him by OMERIS) compare us with our arch-rival state, North Carolina:

• Number of people working in education and health services Ohio 733,000, NC 457,000
• Bioscience patents filed: Ohio 1085, NC 1154
• Bioscience patents issued (2002): O ranks 24th, NC ranks 30th
• Clinical trials: Ohio 829, NC 628
• Technology training in schools: Ohio ranks 4th, NC ranks 44th (hey!!)
• National ranking in education: [the numbers weren't clear here]. When I googled this, I found this site indicating that in the 2005-6 rankings, Ohio was 31st (down 11 pts.) and NC was 22nd (up 3).

Still given the other positive stats, it's pretty annoying to look at these next figures:

• Avg. salary medical devices & equipment: O 45184, NC 54091
• Avg. salary pharmaceuticals: O 57283, NC 69414

I mean what's up with that? I gotta tell you, a friend went to live in North Carolina (Raleigh) for a while because it had such a great rep (Forbes called it the best place to live in the South) and she had to leave after 18 months because there was nothing to do. What I get from her experience combined with stories from others I've known who lived there is that if you don't work for a university or one of the Triangle tech companies, Raleigh is basically a smallish southern city, many of whose residents don't seem to particularly warm up to Northerners.

Reminds me of a friend who lived in Germany while in the Army. He went out and got to know the natives, but most of his fellow soliders simply lived the entire time on the Army base and fraternized with their "own kind." (Here are the latest "best places" from CNN Money--their pick this year is South Carolina.)

With all the development we have going on here in NEO, we're poised to be a great bio center. Now all we have to do is add education to our top priorities and pump some more dollars and passion into our schools.