  Download the I-Q Corridor white paper.Wisconsin lies at the core of the I-Q Corridor, a region rich in ideas, innovative workers, investment capital and some of the world’s most exciting intellectual property – especially in biotechnology, the life sciences, information technology and advanced manufacturing. - A distance of only 400 miles separates two dynamos of the Midwest economy – Chicago & the “twin cities” of Minneapolis & St. Paul. That’s a shorter drive or flight than what separates San Diego from the “Silicon Valley” in California.
- Strategically located between Chicago and the Twin Cities and traversed by Interstates 90 and 94 lies Wisconsin, one of the nation’s fastest growing technology states in its own right.
- Biotechnology is a $5 billion industry in Wisconsin, making up a cluster of about 200 companies employing 28,000.
- Wisconsin is ranked in the top 10 for biotechnology employment growth and the number of biotech companies.
- Wisconsin has leading research facilities such as the UW-Madison (perennially top five in U.S. research spending), the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Marshfield Clinic.
- Wisconsin has growing capital markets, especially within angel networks; strong partnership organizations' a thriving cluster of science companies and a health climate for businesses, academic and government cooperation.
- Wisconsin has emerging centers of research excellence in tissue regeneration, personalized medicine, error-free hospitals, genetically modified organisms, zoonotics disease control & small molecule pharmaceuticals. Its bioinformatics and medical devices clusters are strong and growing, led by companies such as GE Healthcare and TomoTherapy.
- Information Technology and other high-tech goods and services are an emerging sector of the Wisconsin economy. In July 2007, the annual Cyberstates survey by AeA showed high-tech exports from Wisconsin totaled $4.3 billion in 2006, jumping an impressive $827 million from the previous year. Fully 25 percent o Wisconsin's exports are tech exports, and the sector supports an additional 12,300 tech-based jobs.
- The I-Q Corridor is home to more than 14.3 million people who live within a short commute of I-90, I-94 or I-43 between Chicago and the Twin Cities.
That figure includes 7.7 million in Chicagoland counties that lie north and west of the city (Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake and McHenry); 372,000 in the Rockford, Ill., area; 160,000 in Wisconsin's Kenosha County; 160,000 in Wisconsin's Rock County; 1.75 million in the Milwaukee-Racine-Waukesha area; 602,000 in Wisconsin's Madison-Baraboo area; 180,000 in Wisconsin's Eau Claire-Chippewa-Dunn area; 673,000 in the four most populated counties of the Fox Valley (Brown, Fond du Lac, Outagamie and Winnebago); 75,000 in the Marshfield-Wisconsin Rapids area; and 2.81 million in the Twin Cities region.
These figures are from 2005 and 2006 population estimates and/or U.S. Census data, and are rounded to the nearest thousand.
But it’s the combined power of the region that makes the “I-Q Corridor” a vibrant location for biotechnology research, technology transfer and company growth.
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