Top 100 U.S. Metros: Model for Economic Growth

I want to quote from the latest Time Magazine with the cover "How to Restore the American Dream". Also, in this Time Magazine I found the article called, "City Center" by Bruce Katz.

Begin quote:
"We mythologize the benefits of small town America, but it's the major Metros that make the country thrive. Why?

When cities collect networks of entrepreneurial firms, smart people, universities and other supporting institutions in close proximity, incredible things happen.

People engage. Specializations converge. Ideas collide and flourish. New inventions and processes emerge in research labs and processes emerge in research labs and on factory floors. New products and companies follow. As Henry Cisneros, fomer U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban development likes to say, 'Cities are places where 2 plus 2 equals 5'."

2nd quote:

The following quoted percentages are from U.S. top 100 metropolitan cities:
65% of U.S. population
66% of research universities
81% of research and development
94% of public transit passenger miles
78% of patents
94% of venture capital Funding
75% of Graduate degree holders
67% of jobs

end quotes.

I live in California and fairly near to Stanford University and Silicon Valley. Stanford University and Silicon Valley are one of these places that a lot has been going on, especially since the microprocessor was invented I believe in the early 1970s. So, Hewlett-Packard is one of the first companies, and then many others like Apple Computer, the seeds of Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems, then eventually Google and many many others. So this interplay between a good research university and new and great business Ideas and then actual businesses and then funding through Venture Capitalists all join together in such areas. As you noticed above in the statistics they are about metros, their best universities, and the interplay between brilliant people from these universities and venture capitalists who can make things happen for really great ideas. This is how great companies are formed, hire people and create jobs and change the world.

The following quote is from:
http://inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventions/a/microprocessor.htm

In November, 1971, a company called Intel publicly introduced the world's first single chip microprocessor, the Intel 4004 (U.S. Patent #3,821,715), invented by Intel engineers Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, and Stan Mazor. end quote.