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* OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Dr. James Goodnight
President and chief executive officer, SAS
Chronicling the impact of Dr. James Goodnight on North Carolina's technology industry is a little like chronicling the impact of Michael Jordan on the sport of basketball the influence is too great to accurately measure and neither of them seem ready to ride into the sunset.
Goodnight, along with three others, founded SAS in 1976 while adjunct professors at North Carolina State University.
Goodnight developed the SAS programming language with several partners and initially used it to analyze agricultural data. They quickly realized that it had lucrative commercial potential and set up shop across the street from NCSU.
Goodnight moved the company to Cary in 1981 and led it to...