Risk, Finance and North Carolina's Post-Industrial Future

While innovation is generally seen as the engine of modern economic development, geographers have paid scant attention to the role of finance as an element of the innovation infrastructure. This study explores the availability of venture capital (a type of finance vital to the creation of modern firms) in North Carolina. The data reveal that North Carolina receives below average amounts of venture capital investment despite its remarkable success in creating human capital and transferring research from universities into firms (best exemplified by the Research Triangle Park). The scarcity of venture capital has forced the state to continue to rely on branch-plant facilities for economic development, a situation that compounds the capital shortage by extracting locally earned profits from the state's economy.