South Dakota is prime location for the medical device manufacturing industry. Companies like 3M, EMPI and Vishay-Dale have found what they need for success in South Dakota. A business/entrepreneur friendly tax climate, a research atmosphere of collaboration, and an educational system open to your needs makes South Dakota the right state for your business expansion.
In 2006, 3M announced a $68 million expansion in Aberdeen and Brookings.
In 2007, $400 million dollars was donated by T. Denny Sanford of South Dakota to the Sioux Valley Hospital System (now Sanford Health) for R&D efforts and to establish a children’s hospital.
South Dakota activities in R&D in the past few years include:
The Homestake Mine will be converted (announced July 10, 2007) into the deepest underground lab in the world, a project undertaken by the National Science Foundation.
The South Dakota Public University system added 14 new PhD programs (since 2005).
The most recent NSF rankings indicated that South Dakota had the second highest increase of Industry-financed R&D expenditures at Colleges and Universities (91.29% increase).
Additionally, those same rankings also indicated that South Dakota had the highest increase in Academic R&D Expenditures (106.2% increase).
Money was pledged by the Great Plains Education Foundation to connect South Dakota’s University System to the National Research Network (Internet2). The REED Network is a high-speed network that will connect the 6 public universities to the rest of the nation, allowing easier collaboration on Research projects with partner universities.
