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This report from the Silicon Valley Leadership group is quite interesting: http://svcip.com/files/SVCIP_2017.pdf. It happens to include both Boston and Seattle among others in its peer regions for the various data points. Among other nuggets it had this:
"Silicon Valley has an overall large number of STEM workers compared to other innovation regions. In 2015, the region had 336,820 STEM workers, behind much bigger population centers such as New York City (463,780) and Southern California (412,780), but well ahead of Boston (226,570), Seattle (196,480), and Austin (93,600)."
A big percentage of those would be doctors, structural engineers, chemists, and other fields not under the most common "tech" categories.
A big city like NY/LA would have a ton of people in medicine and other fields that are partially a function of population size.
I'm surprised Boston isn't much higher. Subtract education, medicine, biotech, etc., and the number must shrink quite a bit.
Wow, this is a case study in the pitfalls of this sort of list, and the importance of understanding before the math happens.
For example you seem to be crediting the headquarters and not where the work happens. A lot of companies have major engineering centers outside of their hometowns.
You're also apparently defining tech really broadly in terms of companies included. But putting the entire company revenues in the tech category for every company. And not including companies that aren't primarily "tech" even if they employ a lot of tech people.
yup. its flawed (equally so for both cities). but i think it gives a pretty accurate glimpse of the two areas tech scene.
actually their definition of tech industry is pretty narrow; and as mentioned in my post forbes doesnt consider 501(c) businesses (university labs, hospital research centers, open-source organizations, ...) as corporations which wouldve scored boston even higher.
Here's the worst part aside from overcrediting HQ locations: You're giving small companies WAY too many points. One GE, Amazon, or Microsoft is worth dozens of companies toward the bottom of the list. Even half-assing things it should be more of a exponential factor at the top.
That's forgetting of course that GE has its major innovation operations all over the place and is hugely diversified. Kitchen appliances aren't really tech.
And you're including biotech, not technically included.
Here's the worst part aside from overcrediting HQ locations: You're giving small companies WAY too many points. One GE, Amazon, or Microsoft is worth dozens of companies toward the bottom of the list. Even half-assing things it should be more of a exponential factor at the top.
That's forgetting of course that GE has its major innovation operations all over the place and is hugely diversified. Kitchen appliances aren't really tech.
And you're including biotech, not technically included.
ge moved last year from connecticut to boston to amp up its medical systems division.
i believe that biotech is more important than social networks.
we can score it exponentially; mite be a more interesting comparison.
hq's are located where companies get the best tax credits as well as they like to be closer to the action.
GE is a great example. They're on your list because their tiny HQ moved, despite the R&D generally staying put. The HQ location is nearly irrelevant to this discussion.
Biotech can count as tech, but most people count them separately. Biotech often views itself as a wing of health sciences, while tech tends to view itself as a wing of business/consumer products and services. Their business associations tend to be different. Education is different. There's overlap of course, for example since computing has a big role in genomics.
According to this survey done by KMPG of global technology leaders, after the Bay Area, the most important global technology innovation hubs in US are:
That was from February 2016 though, so things might have changed in the last year as well.
It's absolutely amazing how far ahead San Fran and San Jose are from the rest of the pack. Wow.
I'm not sure why so many people are skipping over this source. This seems to be exactly what the OP was asking for.
Metro Venture Capital Investment (in millions) Share of U.S. Total
San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA $8,468 25.26%
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA $4,865 14.51%
New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA $3,335 9.95%
Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH $3,199 9.54%
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA Met $1,695 5.06%
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV $1,268 3.78%
San Diego-Carlsbad, CA $944 2.82%
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA $873 2.61%
The companies here read like a who's who of tech: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Zillow, Redfin, Expedia, Big Fish Games, Valve, Nintendo, Tableau, Snapchat, Twitter, T-Mobile, Zulily, and hundreds of startups courtesy of Geekwire: Startup List - GeekWire
Many of those companies also do A LOT of work in the Boston area.
It's absolutely amazing how far ahead San Fran and San Jose are from the rest of the pack. Wow.
I'm not sure why so many people are skipping over this source. This seems to be exactly what the OP was asking for.
Metro Venture Capital Investment (in millions) Share of U.S. Total
San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA $8,468 25.26%
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA $4,865 14.51%
New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA $3,335 9.95%
Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH $3,199 9.54%
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA Met $1,695 5.06%
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV $1,268 3.78%
San Diego-Carlsbad, CA $944 2.82%
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA $873 2.61%
That list answers a completely different question. It tells you very little to nothing about which cities are "tech hubs".
Honestly, it's silly that this is even a debate. The answer if you're looking at cities pound-for-pound is Seattle without a doubt. The answer if you're looking in the absolute is NYC.
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