I-Q Corridor

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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 is Wisconsin, one of the nation’s fastest growing technology states in its own right. Wisconsin is ranked in the top 10 for biotechnology employment growth and the number of biotech companies.
• Biotechnology is a $4.9 billion industry in Wisconsin, making up a cluster of about 200 companies employing 28,000.
• Wisconsin provides a complete resource package, from start-up financing to manufacturing and production assistance, uniquely designed to maximize profitability and success for all life science ventures.
• Wisconsin has leading research facilities, growing capital markets, strong partnership organizations, a thriving cluster of science companies and a healthy climate for business, academic & 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.
• 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.