In new research released last week, the Kaufman Foundation analyzed almost three decades of research (1982-2010) about firms making the annual Inc. 500 lists of the nation's fastest-growing companies. The researchers also broke out data for 2000-2010 for states, metro areas and counties. For Miami-Dade and the state, the findings are somewhat sobering. For the 2000-2010 period, the research shows:
Florida, fourth in nation by population, ranks 17th in the nation for the number of Inc. 500 firms on a per capita basis.
Florida has the greatest concentration of Inc. 500 firms in the areas of IT, 19%, about even with the national average. It has nearly twice as many health and drug industry firms (12%) as the national average (6.5%), and more advertising/marketing (11.2%), than the national average of 8.6%.
The Miami-Pompano metro area ranked 22 in nation among large metro areas, just above Orlando-Kissimmee at 24th.
Kauffman also mapped the findings by county. When you choose the 2000-2010 period and look at Florida, Miami-Dade comes in 16th in the state by the number of Inc. 500 firms per capita (1.6 firms per 1,000 population), falling behind 15 counties that included cities such as Orlando, Jacksonville, Gainesville and Tampa. Palm Beach County (4.3 firms per 1,000 population) does better, coming in third in the state and Broward (2.3) falls between the two. How did other counties outside the state do on a per capita basis, according to the map? Travis County (Austin) – 9.1 per 1,000 population; Boulder County – 10.2; Fulton County (Atlanta) – 14.4, to name a few. For the entire period, 1982-2010, counties in the Washington DC area topped the list.
Perhaps, this research is more uplifting.
Start-ups benefit from being located in the regions where their founders were born or have lived for a long time, according to a new study by Professors Olav Sorenson of the Yale School of Management and Michael Dahl of Aalborg University.
Sorenson and Dahl examined data on more than 10,000 Danish start-ups and the characteristics of their founders. According to its results, an entrepreneur with an average tenure of 6.4 years in a region had more profit and had a 9% lower failure rate than a newcomer. Each year a founder lived in the region reduced the failure rate by nearly 2%, and each additional year of tenure translated into $1,362 more in profits in each year of operation, the researchers found.
The study, "Home Sweet Home: Entrepreneurs' Location Choices and the Performance of Their Ventures," was published in Management Science (June 2012).