"Utah is in the ranks of the big boys now," says Ross DeVol, economic research director at the Milken Institute, a California-based nonprofit that periodically evaluates the 50 states on their success at converting R&D into products, companies, and high-paying jobs. Known more for coal mines and oil refineries than for a high-tech business culture, Utah placed near the top in 2010 rankings recently released by the Milken Institute and by the Washington, DC–based Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), which independently conducts a similar assessment.
Utah's success is used by both organizations to illustrate a wider trend: States that invest in basic R&D and technology commercialization are more likely than those that don't to create new businesses and jobs over the long haul. "You can explain about two-thirds of a state's economic performance by its innovation activities and its high-tech sector," says DeVol, coauthor of the Milken Institute's State...