That means, the time to plant seeds for tomorrow’s innovation is now, when the global economy is shrinking, unemployment is rising and one of the world’s largest carmakers, General Moters, is about to restructure in the biggest industrial bankruptcy in U.S. history.

We also have to prepare the soil to make them grow in a park where we intend to reap science-driven innovation, said Robert Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Research Triangle Park benefited from the strides large corporations made in research and development. In the 1970s, the biggest companies dominated the generation of innovative technologies. But that has changed significantly in the past 30 years.

Today, large corporations are moving R&D jobs offshore, to lower-cost countries. Companies with fewer than 5,000 employees contribute more than 80 percent of the top 100 innovations. And science-driven job growth increasingly depends on collaboration that crosses borders and involves companies large and small as well as universities.

What does that mean for RTP? Atkinson will offer suggestions at the International Association of Science Parks conference in Raleigh this week.

Atkinson, who in 1989 received a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is one of the key speakers at the IASP conference, which is bringing more than 750 participants from about 50 countries to the Triangle. He spoke to Science in the Triangle in advance of his presentation Wednesday. Here is an edited version of the conversation:

Q: What should the Research Triangle area do to foster and tap science-driven innovations and create jobs for another 50 years?

A:The Triangle has largely focused on being a branch plant for R&D. The area has long struggled with becoming more entrepeneurial.

An institutional culture change is necessary at Triangle universities. Right now, the corporate labs are doing their thing and the universities are doing their thing. Scientists, institutions and the business community need to work much more collaboratively.

This is a leadership issue that must be tackled by the Triangle business community, political leaders and universities.

Q: Why is it important to address this issue now?

A: Downturns can be fertile periods for innovation. Higher quality startup companies tend to spring up during downturns than during prosperous times. Innovation is critical to the economic success of a region such as the Triangle.

Q: Can you provide examples of how other regions do it?

A: Silicon Valley has always been much more collaborative than the Research Triangle area.

In southern California, the University of California at San Diego is tapping the resources and experiences of a cluster of wireless engineering companies. Representatives of the companies help the university to interview job applicants for faculty positions. My God, what a radical idea.

In Ottawa, Canada, the Information and Communications Technology Council brings together members from companies, universities and federal labs to allign their ideas and needs and direct job growth.

Purdue seized the grand opening of Quintiles Transnational’s new global headquarters in Durham to talk about a founder’s tax credit and small innovation research grants she said she wants legislators to pass during the ongoing session.

Quintiles Plaza, a 10-story-tall, environmentally friendly building befitting a company with nearly $3 billion in annual revenue, made for a good backdrop. Conceived in a trailer on the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill campus 27 years ago, Quintiles has become the largest contract research organization in the world. Of 23,000 Quintilians, as co-founder Dennis Gillings calls employees, about 1,700 work in the Triangle.

“There’s nothing that could have kept me away from this,” Perdue told a crowd of hundreds that had gathered for the grand opening. “This is the kind of company we want.”

Located at the gateway to Research Triangle Park, a North Carolina economic engine that was nothing but scrub pines and possums 50 years ago, Quintiles embodies the entrepreneurship that Perdue said she wants to foster with the proposed incentives. The tax credit, for example, would allow successful company founders to sell their stock without getting penalized for capital gains.

Especially biopharma research and nanotechnology are expected to spawn possible Quintiles of the future and North Carolina is dotted with research hubs in both fields from the Triangle to Charlotte.

As for Quintiles, the company that started as a small consulting business in 1974 grew quickly as pharmaceutical companies farmed out more and more of their drug testing. “We thought we hit it big time when we moved into a small house in Carrboro,” Gillings told the crowd at the grand opening.

Quintiles’ business continued to increase and the company has had a hand in the development of the 30 best selling pharmaceutical medicines and nine of the 10 best selling biotech drugs.

In 2006, about $25 million in state and local incentives convinced Quintiles to expand in Durham and move into a new  headquarters building. The expansion was projected to create 1,000 new jobs in the Triangle by 2012.

So far, more than 400 employees have been added, Gillings said. “We’ve come a long way, baby, from that trailer.”

It’s a question that more than 700 economic developers, economists, scientists, investors and business executives from around the world will explore at the three-day International Association of Science Parks conference that starts June 1 at the Raleigh Convention Center.

The IASP, which counts Research Triangle Park among its 350 members, will for the first time in its 25-year history hold its annual conference in the U.S., near RTP, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and is the second oldest research park in the world.

Aside from anniversaries of Triangle organizations that have mined the massive research activities in the area to create well-paying jobs – the N.C. Biotechnology Center and the Council for Entrepreneurial Development turn 25 this year – the location for the IASP conference also reflects the effects information technology is having on research and development in the U.S.: E-mail, video teleconferencing and the Internet are allowing for greater flexibility of where scientists work.

That’s great for science. But it poses a challenge for U.S. science clusters like RTP, one of the largest research parks in the world, and areas surrounding them.

North Carolina has seven research parks and about 4 million people employed in research and development statewide, including about 700,000 in the Triangle, according to labor market statistics. The state has also made it a priority to recruit biotech and pharmaceutical manufacturing jobs on the back of the existing R&D activities.

So what can research parks like RTP do to help keep existing science jobs and attract new ones? What role should research parks play in turning science into jobs in the next 50 years? And where is science going? Which innovations will change the lives of our children and grandchildren?

Many speakers at the conference will address those questions and offer answers, or at least projections. Here is a handful of some of the most influential and well known of the speakers:

• Andrew Witty, chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, a British drugmaker that has its U.S. headquarters in RTP and has been cutting jobs for about 18 months.
• Anthony Townsend, research director of the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif.
• Ross DeVol, director of regional economics at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, Calif.
• Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.
• Gene DePrez, a corporate location consultant and former IBM executive.

To follow the discussion and contribute to the debate, turn to Science in the Triangle, which will bring you updates in real time on the Web and on Twitter.