NC’s oldest tech incubator turns 30. It has been a game-changer for the Triangle.

Research Triangle Park is known for attracting large technology and life science companies like IBM, Apple, and Pfizer. But in reality the RTP regenerates itself to a large degree through the efforts of a myriad of small companies and innovators who struggle daily to bring breakthrough technologies to market.

Few know about the stellar record of North Carolina’s First Flight Venture Center, one of the oldest and most successful technology incubators in the country. It’s not a private business; it’s a nonprofit funded by service fees and government grants.

First Flight celebrates its 30th anniversary Dec. 7 at the Governor’s Mansion with a cast of leaders who helped make RTP what it is today — an engine of growth and a world-leading center for life science discoveries often made by small companies.

Since its founding, First Flight has hosted more than 400 companies, a great many of them “spinouts” led by talented scientists and entrepreneurs from large, research-centric companies like IBM and the Triangle’s three largest universities. They have shaped big ideas into valuable products and services, created thousands of jobs, added huge sums to the tax base, and improved the lives of millions of people in countless ways.

First Flight’s president, Krista Covey, puts it this way: “We work with world changers, problem solvers and innovators doing the impossible every day.”

United Therapeutics is a good example of a high science, high impact superstar that got its start at First Flight. It found cures for pulmonary arterial hypertension and other life-threatening diseases. It has a workforce of nearly a thousand and is currently working to create an unlimited supply of manufactured organs for transplantation. James Crow, a PhD pharmacologist co-founded the company with Martine Rothblatt. They opened an office at First Flight in 1996.

“First Flight enabled us to hit the ground running and never lose our focus on development,” Crow recalled.

No graduate of First Flight has developed a more innovative, potentially world-changing technology than Biomason, the only company globally employing biology to produce sustainable, structural “biocement.” Its precast tiles have been installed at the headquarters of H&M, the giant Swedish retailer, and at a new Martin Marietta location in Raleigh.

At any given time, First Flight has 35 to 40 entrepreneurs in residence, all of whom have world-changing ambitions. For example: Sam Fox, founder of Seneca Devices, has a patent pending solution for turning heavy patients over in hospital and nursing home beds — a costly problem that has plagued healthcare practitioners for decades. That task is one of the leading causes of back injuries among nurses in America and has exposed healthcare facilities to enormous financial liabilities.

Sam, a 25-year-old biomedical engineering graduate of Duke University, can now push a button that solves the problem one patient at a time. His solution, the EasyShift mattress overlay, recently passed clinical trials and entered the manufacturing and marketing stage.

We should never forget the role of small, agile, big-idea companies who animate and regenerate the innovation process within the RTP. First Flight is in the vanguard of that process and, hopefully, will celebrate breakthrough achievements for many years to come.

The authors are co-writing a book on the history, importance, and future of Research Triangle Park.