North Carolina is focused on having global investors and foreign companies bring their operations facilities to the state. Beside its business friendly atmosphere, according to D. Lawrence Bivins, in a North Carolina Economic Development Guide article, this is possible because its “climate, port access and convenient reach to millions of American consumers attract global investment. It’s geographic and demographic diversity allows foreign companies to operate in any corner of the state”.
North Carolina cares about culture and business, and tries to recruit foreign business leaders, by forging an alliance between private and public partners, which results in a much stronger effort. But international recruitment is only half of their two-pronged global economic strategy; North Carolina also focuses on giving its educational programs an international edge. North Carolina has highly competitive graduate school programs that bring the most talented people from across the globe to the state, and they hope to provide them with the tools to succeed in an international market. In doing so, they hope to retain these highly intelligent individuals and continue to attract more to the state in the future.
By attracting these global investors and retaining internationally educated graduates, “North Carolina collected more than $1 billion in foreign direct investment across 86 projects in 2010”, according to Site Selection magazine. North Carolina is already home to approximately 850 international companies and continues to recruit more. This is extremely good news for the construction industries and overall growth for the state’s economy. More direct investment from international companies means more business for construction companies, since they will need new facilities built. This influx of foreign investment also creates overall growth for the economy since more money will be invested directly into the state, and more people will be attracted to live here since there will be more opportunities for success.