City Leaders and Tech Entrepreneurship

Nationwide there’s a real push right now among city leaders to brand their region as a tech entrepreneurship hub. Tech has been hot for several years and every city can point to a local success story within the past 24 months. As tech becomes more pervasive and more industries are affected by it, it only makes sense that cities want to capitalize on it.

Here are a few thoughts on why city leaders are so excited about tech entrepreneurship:

• Cities are either growing or shrinking, so it makes sense to focus on a growth industry
• The internet provides for amazing distribution, collaboration, and innovation anywhere, so the need to be in a major hub has been greatly diminished
• The majority of new jobs created over the next 10 years will come from companies that aren’t in existence today
• Tech jobs are much higher paying than normal jobs
• Tech entrepreneurs that are successful often create significant wealth which can be used to help the community
• Many city leaders are also business owners and want to see more opportunities for their own companies (e.g. growing populations and growing incomes are critical to growing many businesses)

Like anything, I think this focus on branding tech entrepreneurship cities will pass as the next thing comes along, but I hope that enough awareness and understanding is developed such that city leaders will continue to value entrepreneurship, tech or otherwise.

What else? What are some other thoughts on city leaders and tech entrepreneurship?