Where are the entrepreneurs?

Check out MPR Reporter Mark Steil's piece today on a new examination of whether Minnesota has a healthy environment for science and technology jobs. It certainly got me digging around a little.

As Steil points out, the thrust of the report by the Legislature-appointed Science and Technology Authority is that the state is lagging behind other states. You can read the whole report here, but what struck me was the low ranking it found for Minnesota entrepreneurship.

That echoes a theme from a different but related group last month, which said the state is well off its goal of being in the top five states when it comes to broadband speed and availability.

The latest report sites findings by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which compiles a state-by-state "new economy" index. That foundation found not only that Minnesota ranked 42nd in the nation on entrepreneurship in 2010, but that the state's ranking had slipped from 24th just three years earlier.

In the top-ranked state, Georgia, 0.5 percent of the population are considered entrepreneurs. In Minnesota, it's less than half that, 0.22 percent. It's always a good idea to take these measurements with a grain of salt, but why would that be?

Are people less likely to take risks than they once were? Is it a question of credit that microlending programs can address?

By the way, if you want a sobering assessment of the nation's ability to claw back to its leadership position in innovation, check the foundation's full report.

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