August 30th, 2013, By Don Catalano
If you’ve got a growing innovative business, there are three cities that you can cross off of your site selection list – San Francisco, San Jose and Boston. All of them posted lower than average growth in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) jobs. The new, hot and emerging markets are clustered in the middle of the country, away from the coasts. Markets that you might not think of as high-tech hotbeds are where you should be looking.
Between 2000 and 2012, the Raleigh metropolitan area was the country’s fastest growing. Featuring a reasonable cost of living and great quality of life, it’s not surprising. Furthermore, the area has a long history of technological innovation. The Research Triangle Park, located northwest of Raleigh is the largest research park in the US, spanning 7,000 acres. It’s home to over 170 companies and has spurred the creation of over 1,800 start-ups.
Raleigh also has one of the key necessities for an emerging center of innovation – well trained college graduates. The community itself is home to North Carolina State University. Nearby Durham and Chapel Hill host prestigious Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, respectively.
Columbus isn’t just a government town. It’s home to a workforce that has a 32.9% college attendance rate and positive net migration. The community plays home to the country’s third largest college – Ohio State University – as well as two major corporations. While it might be known as a retail and financial services town, thanks to its headquarters for Limited Brands and Nationwide Insurance, it’s also a research hotbed. The nation’s largest private research institution, the Battelle Memorial Institute, is located in the city and has 22,000 employees of its own.
The “Silicon Slopes” are posting a high tech growth rate six times that of the country’s average. Nearby Lehi produces 7% of the world’s flash memory chips, and the communities around Salt Lake City play home to companies like Adobe, eBay and Microsoft. While the University of Utah might not have the name recognition of Stanford or MIT, it educated the founders of Atari, Adobe, and Pixar.
The Salt Lake City area also has a long history of tech innovation, having played host to Novell, Iomega and WordPerfect over the years. Today, it has a business friendly tax code, educated workforce and legendary employee productivity.
Austin has been a best-kept secret of site selection experts for years. While Houston and Dallas might be bigger markets, Austin has established itself as a tech hotbed thanks to a little company known as Dell. Today, companies like Facebook, Apple and Google all have Austin locations that take advantage of the area’s lower cost of living and highly educated work force. Austin has established itself as a leader in the mobile market, and both the local and state governments have a tax structure that is friendly to corporations and residents alike.
Underlying all of the bad news that has put Detroit in the media lately are a few facts that make it a highly considerable city for startup site selection teams. Detroit has been known historically as a car-manufacturing city. The average car new has 100 million lines of code. In other words, Detroit has been a tech hotbed for years. In fact, according to Forbes, its concentration of tech workers is 50% higher than the national average – and that’s after losing one-fifth of its tech jobs. In addition to its workforce, Detroit enjoys an attractive cost of living. Furthermore, outside the city itself, families and young tech workers can find attractive neighborhoods and good schools.