The philosophy of EPSCoR has been to improve the research infrastructure in states that were receiving few NSF grants. This grant money has had a catalytic effect on other grants and contracts that our universities have been able to win. Benfield told the Regents that when South Dakota joined EPSCoR in 1989 the state was last in the nation in obtaining NSF grants. In six years the state passed four other states in the total amount of NSF funding received. The EPSCoR grants have focused on basic research in support of economies important to South Dakota.
Basic research can spin off into new businesses and industries.
It was university-based research in California and North Carolina that created those booming high tech economies. Such industries tend to cluster and then reinforce the research environment for all of them. Others can take the result of basic research and apply it. That is what leads to new products for agriculture or new treatments in medicine. This is the reason building research capacity is so important to a state.