It is a perfect moment for meditation — a gray overcast morning with the distant mountains wrapped in a foggy, blue mist. Robert Kopstein is pondering his Roanoke-based company’s future. Optical Cable Corp. is pursuing a vigorous growth strategy that includes a plant expansion expected to create hundreds of new jobs in the area. The company is adding one new production line each month through the end of the year to keep pace with growing demand for its rugged, lightweight fiber optic cable products.

Robert Kopstein at Optical Cable Photo by Doug Miller

To man the new lines, Optical Cable expects to boost its 225-employee work force by about 60 percent by year’s end. Demand for the company’s products is surging. Last year, Optical Cable sold more than 120,000 miles worth of fiber optic cable — enough to circle Earth about five times — and now the company is bucking a national trend. Ironically while big names among telecom suppliers such as Lucent and JDS Uniphase face looming layoffs, Optical Cable is preparing a second offering to raise $90 million to expand in Asia. Since going public in 1996, Optical Cable’s revenue has doubled to $58 million. "Our long-term goal," Kopstein says matter-of-factly, "is to win more than half of the global market for fiber optics." Right now the company has about 25 percent of the U.S. market and 10 percent of the worldwide market.

The story of Optical Cable shows how the Roanoke/New River Valley has evolved from a hilly railroad and banking hub into a center for emerging technologies. Home to more than 280,000 people and extending from Roanoke to Marion in the west and Rocky Mount in the south, the region is dotted with entrepreneurial companies that are pioneering research in fiber optics, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing and software applications. Nearby Virginia Tech has helped spawn many of these creative ideas, and a recent influx of venture capital provides the necessary ingredient for translating them into marketable products. "About five years ago there was hardly a conception of the impact of technology here," notes Gary Atkinson, a native of the region and director of the Roanoke office of Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology. "Now, technology is widely recognized as a building block for economic growth and development."

Even though the region suffers a "brain drain" from Virginia Tech, with many of its engineers lured away from the area, the locally strong economy is boosting the trend towards commercializing developing intellectual properties. And the area’s demographic profile is something to cheer about. Unemployment hovers around 1.6 percent. The region’s per capita income of $28,491 is roughly the same as the U.S. average and only $1,300 below Virginia’s average wage. Violent crime ranks below the state average. Costs of housing and new construction likewise are ranked among the lowest in Virginia, according to several independent surveys.

A kingpin in the region is Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, a bustling research center. Already hailed for its reputable engineering school, the university is helping to spark economic development through its Corporate Research Center. Situated on 120 acres adjacent to the Virginia Tech’s campus airport, the complex consists of 16 buildings that house companies specializing in fields as diverse as biosciences and polymer development.

Just down the road, Radford University is developing a Business Technology Park on a 78-acre property in Pulaski County. Formerly the site of St. Albans Hospital, the property includes an 110,000-square-foot main building, conference center and other amenities. It will serve as a hub for the university’s Southwest Virginia Economic Development Center and provide technological support for the first new college at Radford in two decades — the College of Information Science and Technology, which began enrolling students last month.

Virginia Tech’s research center is much further along than Radford’s fledgling project and may be the most visible example of how the New River Valley’s economy is diversifying. Although the service sector accounts for nearly 36,000 local jobs, high-tech manufacturing is a close second, providing balance with about 20,000 positions. Before any manufacturing begins, however, research and development must take place. "The Corporate Research Park is based on the knowledge economy where the end result of a company’s activities is research, not production," says director Joe Meredith. "Our fundamental goal is to raise the economic wealth of the region by bringing in jobs at the top of the economic development food chain."

More than 100 companies lease space in the facility where they develop intellectual property that is then licensed for manufacturing of products. The park’s combined work force is about 1,800. Eventual plans call for 3 million square feet of space to be developed, housing an estimated 3,000 employees. "These are not name-brand companies. They’re companies in emerging industries, managed by youthful entrepreneurs who want to make the world a better place," says Meredith.

One of the park’s tenants is a unit of the firm that produced Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, in 1997. PPL Therapeutics is researching the possibilities for transgenic animals, whose milk is said to produce high levels of therapeutic proteins and peptides. The Scotland-based company landed in Blacksburg in 1993, lured by the prospect of abundant, rolling farmland needed to support its livestock research.

For medical research that benefits humans more directly there is Carilion Health Systems, the region’s largest employer with more than 7,100 workers. Carilion recently sank $70 million into improvements at its Roanoke hospitals. Aside from the tangible benefits of providing thousands of jobs and creating hundreds more indirectly, the 12-hospital health care chain is contributing to economic development by bankrolling a major research complex being constructed in downtown Roanoke. The facility, Carilion Biomedical Institute, is billed as a catalyst for development and commercial application of health-related products, mostly based on research at Virginia Tech and also the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. In 1999, Carilion Health provided $20 million to fund the construction of the biomedical institute that will include a business accelerator and specialized equipment for testing and research.

Carilion Biomedical has lofty aspirations: to create new devices and instruments used in medical, telecommunications and other industries. Although declining to speculate on specific jobs that might eventually be created as a result of such devices, Carilion spokesman Richard Wilkins says there is clear precedent for research universities emerging as dynamic catalysts of economic growth. "Our focus is on fostering research at the universities and improving economic development in southwest Virginia. The objective is to license or spin out four to five pieces of intellectual property into new companies each year," says Wilkins.

One problem with nurturing research, however, is that it can take years before the payoff comes. Yet some regional observers say the long-term approach actually could offer the region a valuable buffer since it promises ongoing work should other sectors take big hits.

Local entrepreneur and innovator, Ronald Blum, understands the value of growing start-up companies. In 1990 Blum launched Innotech, which developed a new technology — surface casting — for making eyeglass lenses. Blum took the company to the Nasdaq in 1996. A year later, he sold the company to Johnson & Johnson for $135 million. The company, now known as Spectacle Lens Group of Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, plans to employ up to 600 people in Roanoke within three years. Blum now spearheads The Egg Factory, a Roanoke company that tries to take innovative ideas and convert them into products and new companies. He says the region needs "one or two" more events similar to the Johnson & Johnson deal.

Cultivating homegrown technology start-ups is diametrically opposite of "holding out tax incentives to land a big cat," says Leigh Huff, managing partner with Gryphon Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Roanoke. "With this approach, the question is what we can do to make sure the region is fertile ground for nurturing and growing entrepreneurial R&D companies." Venture capital firms have taken note. One, Gryphon Capital, has provided funding for such tech firms as Luna Innovations, Wireless Valley, photonics company Haleos (formerly ACT Microdevices) and Phoenix Integration, a software and services firm. In addition, a network of local "angel" investors is being assembled to investigate promising deals and provide important seed capital to help new ideas germinate. "There has been a real upsurge in the percentage of venture capital available here in just the last two years," says Atkinson, "even with the Internet and dot-com crashes."

Growing companies locally does not mean forsaking traditional economic development methods of competing for high-dollar, job-generating projects. During the past year, the Roanoke Valley Economic Development Partnership, an organization funded by seven localities, has netted some significant catches such as Precision Technology Group of Great Britain, Koyo Steering Systems, which manufactures electric steering systems, and Birmingham, Ala.-based Altec Industries, a utility and telecom equipment maker.

While traditional hardware makers are welcome, what’s really changing the landscape is the new emphasis on information and intellectual property, says Phillip Sparks, the economic partnership’s executive director. He acknowledges that a "brain drain" continues to hinder the region’s competitive position. "We’ve been losing Virginia Tech engineering graduates to the Research Triangle, Northern Virginia, Southern California ... We have to find ways to keep them here." Sparks says the area should concentrate on three components: discovery of ideas, research and development and manufacturing. "The partnership’s job is to pay more attention to discovery and R&D, which was traditionally left to the universities. But we can’t forsake the manufacturing part, because that’s what ultimately creates the jobs."

For now, the Roanoke/New River Valley seems to be on the beginning of a long and happy roll with high tech. It will keep it going if the region can find ways to keep homegrown technology brains in its own backyard.