More Praise for Denver: City Ranks #3 for Readiness to Capitalize on the Shift to a Digital Economy.
Recently, The U.S. Chamber of Commerce published their yearly report, Innovation That Matters. The report says that with the technological revolution just beginning, the U.S. economy is completely changing, making way for new leaders and leaving old economic leaders behind.
Luckily, Denver is cited as an emerging leader by the report, ranking #3 in “readiness to capitalize on the inevitable shift to a digital economy.”
The Denver Post recently published a blog on the report, discussing the report, and the Denver startup, The Champa on Commons, the organization spent time with while examining Denver for their report.
Just behind Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area, third place is a huge win for Denver. In order to rank cities on their readiness, the report looks at six main themes: talent, capital, industry specialization, density, connectivity, and culture.
It’s no surprise that Denver ranked #1 for our healthy quality of life, but we also ranked high for our strong supply of educated young people, vibrant cultural foundation, and well-connected ecosystem. Additionally, Denver ranked in the top five for domestic population inflow and involvement and support of investors.
Perhaps even less surprising than being #1 for quality of life, Denver also ranked high in the energy sector. The legacy of Coloradan energy companies gave startups an advantage in the energy sector. However, Denver is falling behind in all other types of startup sectors.
Innovation That Matters reports that Denver has all the pieces in place to become a leader in the new economy, but there are key components missing. One of them being the lack of startups in non-energy sectors, like education tech, health tech, and smart city tech.
Other criticisms include a lack of capital and globalization. Denver may be attracting people from all over the country, but we ranked 23rd out of the 25 cities examined for international inflows.