The recent newly released ITIF State Competitiveness Index again shows the state is very well positioned to take advantage of the innovation economy – we are 5th in the country. It is when you look at the data carefully that you see some interesting and disturbing realities. Connecticut is among the strongest states in the educational attainment of its workforce, the number of scientists and the percentages of jobs in tech related fields. But we are near the bottom of all the states or stuck in the middle in key areas such as total new business starts and failures, relative amount of non-corporate R&D and immigration of high skilled workers.
In summary, Connecticut has the potential to be competitive with any state for job creation by fast growing firms – but we are not there yet and the numbers say we are far behind in some key areas. The challenge for the tech community will be to carefully explain how we can work together and with government to start producing the numbers of companies and jobs that our location and skills should be creating each year. This will be one of our key challenges in the coming years.