What’s common among the top five states is that they all either have a major tech-centric city or they’re close to one, like Connecticut is to NYC.

Besides the well-known hubs on the coasts, MIT economist Simon Johnson argues that there are 102 potential U.S. communities that could be tech hubs if they receive some assistance from the right resource: federal funding.

Federal money towards R&D “will be a catalyst to the development of these places and something that would both directly create jobs and create a lot of follow-on private sector investment,” Johnson said.

Geographic Divide

Among the top 10 innovators, six states were on the Atlantic coast and three bordered the Pacific. Colorado was the sole landlocked state in the top tier.

The state has high educational attainment and several institutions including the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration that perform research and attract technically-skilled workers. Colorado has also focused on promoting commercialization and bolstering the startup and acceleration efforts, said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings, a think tank in Washington DC.

Southern states, for the most part, are at the other extreme. Mississippi was last in the 2019 Bloomberg State Innovation Index, which shows a wide divide between states on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, and those in the south, particularly near the Gulf of Mexico.

The bottom four positions were unchanged from three years earlier, with Mississippi (50), West Virginia (49), Arkansas (48) and Louisiana (47). Combined, those states are headquarters for only five S&P 500 companies, including Walmart Inc., Tyson Foods Inc. and J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc., none of which are considered tech firms.

“What is most important is the construction and catalyzation of super vibrant advanced industry sectors and clusters in a state,” said Muro said. “Commercialization has not been a top priority of universities in the heartland, especially in the South.”

Among the reasons some southern states lag behind is the inability to funnel the research strengths of academic institutions into nearby businesses, according to Muro. Many southern universities “have very strong basic programs and even technology and science-related programs, but they have fallen down on commercialization,” he said.