Boulder, Colorado is the place to watch for emerging STEM businesses. Raleigh and Durham both rank among the top 10 in a recent study bio convergence company CYTENA.
The study analyzed data relating to several factors indicative of an area’s potential for new and emerging companies in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics spheres. The factors analyzed are: tech-based occupation clusters, high-tech industry venture capital, establishment births, latent innovation, change in industry employment and economic wellbeing.
North Carolina metropolitan areas of Durham and Raleigh take the eighth and ninth spots in the study, respectively. The Durham-Chapel Hill metropolitan area scores the maximum 200 in the ‘tech-based occupation clusters’ metric and ranks as high as 14th nationwide for ‘change in industry employment’, and 21st for ‘latent innovation’. The area finishes with an index score of 79.41.
Meanwhile, Raleigh’s metropolitan area boasts top 20 nationwide rankings for ‘high-tech industry venture capital’, ‘tech-based occupation clusters’, and ‘economic wellbeing’ in which it ranks as high as 13th, to score a total index score of 79.01.
Yafees Sarwar, director of marketing at CYTENA, called the metros “the areas from which the next tech titans are likely to arise.”
He said, “It is perhaps unsurprising to see several California areas ranking in the top ten, but is certainly interesting to see the potential of metros in the midwest and North Carolina to begin to compete with the Silicon Valley tech hotspots.”
Boulder, Colorado, is revealed as the number one spot in the country to watch for emerging STEM businesses. Boasting the maximum possible index score of 200 for two of the six analyzed metrics, specifically ‘tech-based occupation clusters’ and ‘high-tech industry venture capital’, Boulder also scores third-highest nationwide in the metrics of ‘latent innovation’ and ‘economic wellbeing’. On top of this, Boulder scores highly throughout the analyzed metrics, allowing the area to come in with an index score of 86.47 out of 100, unveiling it as the top spot for emerging STEM businesses.
San Jose, California, ranks in second place. The metropolitan area, which encapsulates San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara, also scores the top possible score in the ‘tech-based occupation clusters’ and ‘high-tech industry venture capital’ factors, scores in the top 30 areas nationwide for ‘latent innovation’, and as high as fifth for ‘economic wellbeing’. With this, the area has a total index score of 83.43.
Austin, Texas, is revealed in third. Austin’s metropolitan area, which also includes Round Rock, ranks eighth nationwide for the metric of ‘establishment births’ while ranking in the top 20 for ‘high-tech industry venture capital’ and ‘economic wellbeing’, as well as the top 30 for ‘tech-based occupation clusters. The area comes in with a total index score of 81.55.
Provo, Utah, takes fourth place, ranking in the top spot nationwide for ‘economic wellbeing’, the ‘establishment births’, and joint top for ‘high-tech industry venture capital’. This gives the Provo metro area which also encapsulates Orem, a score of 81.01 out of 100.
Denver, is the second Colorado metro area to make the top ten in fifth. The Denver-Aurora-Lakewood area is fairly consistent through the analyzed metrics, crucially ranking top 20 nationwide in three of them. Ultimately Denver scores 80.43.
San Francisco is the second California to reach the top ten. The maximum score of 200 in ‘average annual high-tech industry venture capita’, as well as the second highest score nationally for ‘tech-based occupation clusters’ give the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward area a total index score of 80.23.
Salt Lake City, Utah makes seventh place, ranking second nationwide for ‘economic wellbeing’, and top 30 for ‘tech-based occupation clusters’ and ‘, ‘high-tech industry venture capital’. SLC is also top 40 for ‘establishment births’ metric, scoring 79.5 overall.
The top ten finishes with a third Californian metropolitan area with that of San Diego-Carlsbad. Ranking top 30 nationwide for three analyzed metrics, as well as strongly in the other three, allows San Diego a total index score of 77.02, to round out the ten areas to watch for emerging STEM businesses.
