Rock Clapper has put his money where his mouth is. Like many who volunteer as ambassadors for the North Dakota Department of Commerce, he left the state in the early 1980s to pursue his education and business interests.

Now the successful entrepreneur has established a branch of DataTic Technologies in the NDSU Research and Technology Park and is utilizing the state resources he brags about to investors and corporations across the country.

CEO of DataTic Technologies since 2000, Clapper was drawn to North Dakota first by the state's expansive fiber optic network and its high-speed broadband connections. Such service is crucial to DataTic's Internet-based information platform. DataTic's unique software provides buyers and sellers of fresh produce with real-time access to prices and sales volume of goods and services.

"The company started in the Salinas Valley of California, where 70 percent of all perishable lettuce, cauliflower and broccoli are grown. Our customers can see produce trading live," Clapper said, "and now it's all hosted in North Dakota."

In March 2004, DataTic moved its software hosting facility to Langdon, N.D., and began interviewing potential employees. "We interviewed quite a few computer science students from NDSU and UND and found that the students from NDSU had the programming skills and computer languages we were looking for," Clapper said. That's what led to the opening of a DataTic office in the research park.

"It seemed if we started working with master's and Ph.D. students, even undergraduates -- before they graduate -- it would be easier to fold them into the culture of the company," Clapper said. DataTic plans to hire two teams of five that will rotate between the Langdon and Fargo sites.

"Telemarketing was the first big boom for North Dakota," Clapper said, "the next will be general online, back office support and maintenance. I have a lot of colleagues who ship this work overseas to India and China, but I prefer to use North Dakota." The labor pool is well educated, motivated and hardworking, and state and federal politicians -- like Republican Gov. John Hoeven and Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan -- are working together to attract business.

It's a different state than the one Clapper left behind some 20 years ago. "I didn't want to be in a business contained by the boundaries of a state and small cities," he said. So, he went on to earn a doctorate in applied social psychology at the University of Houston, was a professor in Brown University's medical school and conducted state-of-the-art research for the National Institutes of Health, ran three other companies, took on DataTic, and is now launching RaenDance Industries, an online seller of overstock and other merchandise. RaenDance (www.raendance.com) will have offices in Langdon too.

"I went out into the world and did business," Clapper said, "now it's great to come back and do business in North Dakota."