Something in the Water?
I’ve lived in Utah for 14 years. I really like living here. Granted, there are some things I don’t like, but hey, I figure that’d happen anywhere, as I’ve yet to hear of or experience the perfect place.
As an entrepreneur, I’ve learned to focus on metrics and tangible results. However, you have to be careful as any metric can be misinterpreted, but they almost always put you in the right ballpark.
How does one measure entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial activity? There are those that do:
The Milken Institute in conjunction with Greenstreet Real Estate Partners just released their Best-Performing Cities 2008: Where America’s Jobs Are Created and Sustained report. The Best Performing Cities Index ranks U.S. metro areas based on their ability to grow employment and wages over one-year and five-year periods. (I’d have to agree that growing employment and wages are pretty central to measuring entrepreneurship)
Utah represented well. Very well.
Provo-Orem ranked #1, Salt Lake City ranked #3, Ogden took #18. (On the smaller metro list, St. George was #4.)
Again, all reports/metrics have to be taken with a grain of salt. But if you look over the past while, Utah (#34 state for total population) is showing up at the top of other reports that attempt to measure entrepreneurship as well. For the 3rd year in a row, the Provo/Orem area has more Inc. 500 companies per million residents than anywhere else in the nation. And again this year, we’re about twice as much as the next ranked area — 14.2 in Provo/Orem per million versus 7.5 in Austin, TX. (As an entire state, UT has 5.9 companies on the Inc 500 per million residents, Massachussetts is next at 3.7). In the first part of 2007, the Kaufmann Foundation ranked UT as the most dynamic economy in the Nation. Our unemployment was the lowest any state had every experienced back in 2007, and we’re still one of the best in the country.
So what’s going on here? What’s in the water here in UT? I’m going to post a few ideas on this over the next few weeks, I have some theories of my own. Until then, if you’re an entrepreneur in UT, let’s keep blowing the doors off growth here. If you’re not based here, well, you could always move. 
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