[13] After World War II, North Carolina's economy was hurt as its agriculture, textile, and furniture industries lost market share.

Academics at UNC, NCSU and Duke proposed a park to allow the universities to do research together, harness the area's strengths, and keep graduates in the state.

[14] Guest began advocating the project after unsuccessfully attempting to bring pharmaceutical giant Merck to Aberdeen, North Carolina, in the early 1940s.

[15] Although RTP was initially envisioned as a for-profit business, its strategy shifted at the direction of Archibald "Archie" Davis, a former Wachovia Bank chairman, state senator, and president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, who switched to a non-profit model to purchase the RTP site, and successfully raised $1.425 million in donations from North Carolinians.

[15] The RTP facility handled products including the IBM 1050 terminal, Selectric typewriters, PC and accounting operations, and BladeCenter servers.

[16] In their article "The Growth of Research Triangle Park", Link and Scott posit that entrepreneurial culture and leadership contributed the most to its success as a cluster.

[23] The zoning changes are coupled with legislative changes allowing for Urban Research Service Districts (URSD) within the Park, which can include a mix of retail and residential usages.

On October 1, 2015, former President and CEO of the Research Triangle Foundation, Bob Geolas, announced RTP's plans for a $50,000,000 redevelopment involving the formation of "Park Center".

[citation needed] In March 2019, RTF announced plans to construct Boxyard RTP,[27] an 15,000-square-foot shipping container complex of retail, dining, and other amenities.

[28] The $9M project, which is set on 12 acres (4.9 ha) of the Frontier RTP campus, delayed its launch for a year because of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and soft-launched in June 2021 with a few of the planned tenants opening for business in the days following.

[29] The complex also features a dog park named the Barkyard RTP,[29] pop-up yoga classes, live music, and both standalone and roof-mounted heaters in the outdoor pavilion.