This index is important for understanding the economic and technological competitiveness of different states. The top state is Washington, followed by Massachusetts and Delaware. The worst state was Arkansas, alas.

And of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that our “App Intensity Index”  (from The Geography of the App Economy) was used as one of the inputs to the index.

Nationwide, business investment in equipment and software—a measure of economic vitality in the corporate sector—stalled in the third quarter for the first time since early 2009.

It’s worth noting, however, that tech investment rose in the third quarter to its highest level on record. The chart below shows real investment in computers, software, and communications gear, in millions of 2005 dollars

The chart is based on BEA data. Please note that there was a pause in tech investment, but it came in the second quarter, not the third.

The way to interpret this chart is that we are in the middle of a data-driven boom. Companies view investment in data and data-related equipment as absolutely essential, and continue to spend, fiscal cliff or no.

Having said that, I feel that the NYT article As Boom Lures App Creators, Tough Part Is Making a Living understates the jobs impact of the App Economy in three ways.

First, the article notes that the App Economy “was responsible, directly and indirectly, for 466,000 jobs,” as of the end of 2011, based on a February 2012 study that I did for Technet. However, an October 2012 report entitled The Geography of the App Economy, done by myself and Judith Scherer, showed 519,000 jobs in the App Economy as of April 2012. It would have been much more accurate for the reporter to have cited the more recent–and larger–estimate of App Economy jobs.

Second, it’s certainly true that App Economy entrepreneurs are not all successful, just like entrepreneurs in other fields. However, “The Geography of the App Economy” paper makes it clear that large companies are hiring droves of app developers in-house to create and maintain apps, listing quite a few by name. That paper identified 10 different categories of App Economy jobs, only one of which consisted of the stand-alone app developers that the NYT article focuses on.

Entrepreneurs know that startup businesses typically take at least 3-5 years to make a profit. How long were the entrepreneurs they interviewed in business? And the skills and experience these people develop in their own ventures make them more appealing to be hired at large salaries by more established companies. Indeed, the article notes in passing that one of the entrepreneurs was then able to get a job as a app developer working for a larger company.

In our research, we have found that one of the biggest problems facing App Economy entrepreneurs is that they are competing with large companies for the same talent pool of skilled computer software engineers, user interface designers, and others with app economy skills. In this industry, talent is the most important input, wages are high and rising, and there’s more demand for these skilled individuals than there is supply.

Finally, the NYT article ignores the positive impact of the App Economy on state and local economic development. In an upcoming paper, South Mountain Economics will look at the ways that some leading states and cities are trying to attract app developers and other innovative companies as the foundation for growing their economies. These innovation-minded economic development efforts will turn out to be crucial for economic success going forward.

This study should be required reading for anyone interested in how the Innovation Economy has developed geographically. I’ve taken the liberty of doing some calculations on just a small portion of the reported data (there is much much more):

Let’s start with the ordering. California’s rank as #1 is no surprise. But New Jersey’s ranking as #2 and strong growth is unanticipated (though it’s consistent with NJ’s relatively high ranking in our Geography of the App Economy study).  New Jersey R&D grew almost as fast as Massachusetts over the 1987-2008 period.

The R&D spending in NJ, PA, and CT came mainly from the pharma industry.  I’m going to look to see whether these states have tried to build on their advantages, or whether they have let them dissipate.

Also a surprise is Michigan’s continued high ranking. Auto industry R&D has not been growing very fast. Nevertheless, the industry has poured an enormous amount of money into Michigan over a long period of time, providing a potential base for future tech growth. Indeed, our upcoming study on tech and economic development identifies the Detroit area as having a very interesting cluster of tech-related companies.

More to come.

*Full disclosure–I serve on a National Academy of Sciences panel which is conducting “a study of the status of the science, technology, and innovation (STI) indicators that are currently developed and published by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES).” This post uses only public information contained in the cited study.

By the time Google began installing its Fiber service on Tuesday, nearly a dozen startups had moved into a six-block radius—about half packed into two houses—including companies building a search engine for social-network data and security software for smartphones that identifies users by vein patterns in their eyes.

“There was already a movement,” said Adam Arredondo, a shaggy-haired 28-year-old who runs a website for local events out of one of the house’s basements. Google Fiber “was the accelerant,” he said.

If the Kansas City project succeeds, that’s good news for many economically languishing areas across the countries. When we did our report on “The Geography of the App Economy,” we found that app economy jobs were being created in every state, even without the impetus of ultrafast broadband. With the right policies,  there could be a massive economic renaissance built around tech.

That’s also the message coming from a new book by Reed Hundt and Blair Levin entitled The Politics of Abundance–technology can help pull us out of the doldrums, if we follow the right policies. (longer review to follow).

Against that backdrop, it is notable that  AT&T announced yesterday that it  expected  a capital spending budget of $22 billion per year for the next three years.  To put this in perspective, the *entire* motor vehicle industry invested less than $20 billion  in the United States in 2011.

In some ways, AT&T’s willingness to make a public announcement of a capital spending target three years out is a challenge to Corporate America (though the company certainly does not frame it this way).  By making this public statement,  AT&T is effectively saying that it believes in the communications revolution, data-driven growth,  and the strength of the U.S. economy.

Why can’t other companies make the same sort of public announcement of  long-term capital spending goals and offer additional certainty to the still recovering U.S. economy?  Truthfully, growth is suffering more from investment uncertainty than from regulatory uncertainty. If large companies pledged to maintain or increase domestic capital spending over the next three years, it would go a long way to boosting economic and job growth.

With the election now over, the Obama Administration should hold up AT&T–and other companies willing to invest in America–as examples of what to do right.  If Obama wants a high-growth economy with prosperity for all, he needs to encourage more companies to make the same kind of bet on America’s future.

An essential part of that vision, however, is the creation of a much stronger safety net.  If we are going to ask Americans to take risks for growth, to accept disruption in return for innovation, they have to be protected from the worst consequences of failure.

In particular, it becomes much harder to take a chance on growth if it means you might lose your healthcare. That’s why Obamacare, despite being ungainly and awkward, is an essential step towards a high-growth economy. People who want to start a new company or join an innovative new enterprise shouldn’t have to worry about whether they will be able to get healthcare. People who want to work halftime and go back to school shouldn’t have to worry about whether a sudden medical problem will throw them in the poorhouse.

Obamacare is a step towards unleashing the creative juices of Americans.  There are lots of problems, of course. We need to ensure that the new Obamacare bureaucracies don’t strangle innovative companies. But now that the basic mechanisms are in place, we can move onto the more important task of empowering innovative and hardworking Americans.

But the biggest decision facing the next president—and Americans in general—goes far beyond the ‘fiscal cliff’, or any of the machinations which fascinate Washingtonians. Should the United States follow its current path of long-term stagnation, or should we choose a road that likely leads to rapid—but disruptive—growth?

This choice will have huge and resonating consequences. In a slow-growth economy, government leaders must focus on apportioning pain and austerity. The rich and the poor within each country or region struggle over scarce resources, with predictable consequences. We are seeing the face of the stagnant future in Europe now, where country after country are being forced to absorb massive cutbacks. Slow growth means that our children will be poorer than we are.

A high-growth economy is based on innovation and the willingness to strike out into new areas. Rapid growth makes it easier to deal with purely financial problems such as the budget deficit—remember that Bill Clinton was able to produce a budget surplus in the 1990s.  Moreover, innovation challenges the status quo and breaks down the rigid income inequalities.

As you might guess, I favor the high-growth economy and the optimism about the future that comes along with it. But we can’t fool ourselves–innovation is fundamentally disruptive and risky. We’re not just talking smartphones and tablets. The list of potential breakthroughs is long and growing—3D printing to reinvigorate manufacturing, biotech to transform healthcare, nanotech to create new materials. Each of these potential breakthrough technologies can destroy existing businesses and jobs even as they juice up growth.

The high-growth versus stagnation decision does not fit easily into party boxes. There are Republicans and Democrats who favor the status quo and stagnation, just as there are Democrats and Republicans who favor innovation and a high-growth economy.  This lack of ideological clarity explains why the debates barely mentioned the internet or mobile (See here http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/the-astonishing-obama-tech-boom-that-he-doesnt-want-to-talk-about/263601/).

But now that the election is over, it’s time to press the new president to actually move into the 21^st century, and deal with what will likely be the question that defines the next Administration–what kind of growth do we *really* want?

From 2007 to 2011 the number of jobs in California’s “Internet industry”—web search, publishing, social media, and the like–rose by 50%. What’s more, that trend has continued. Over the past year alone, the number of California want ads for computer software engineers—the key human capital input for growing internet firms–has increased by 27%, according to The Conference Board’s database of help wanted ads.

Given the job-creating strength of the state Internet industry, it’s a good thing that  California–traditionally known as a high-regulation state–is  taking steps to protect its growth. On September 28 Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that prohibited the state’s Public Utilities Commission from regulating Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and other internet-based services, including mobile apps.

The bill made two important points:*

California’s innovation economy is leading the state’s economic recovery. Silicon Valley alone added 42,000 jobs in 2011, an increase of 3.8 percent versus a national job growth rate of 1.1 percent. The newly designated “app,” for application, economy has resulted in 466,000 new jobs nationwide, with 25 percent of that total created in California.”

and

The Internet and Internet Protocol-based (IP-based) services have flourished to the benefit of all Californians under the current regulatory structure.

In other words, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it–a good principle.

The bill would stop the state’s Public Utilities Commission from putting more rules on Internet-based services, including VoIP. Clearly this makes sense for California, which is benefiting so much from the growth of the Internet sector. But this applies to other states as well:  if individual states started regulating Internet-based services, we would get the equivalent of trade barriers between states.

But there’s a broader question as well. The Progressive Policy Institute has just released a paper entitled Beyond Goods and Services: The (Unmeasured) Rise of the Data-Driven Economy. This paper shows how, more than ever, data is a potent source of economic growth.   Data consumption by individual Americans, if measured correctly, is responsible for adding an extra half percentage point  to GDP growth today. And that contribution is only going to grow over time.

That means states, localities, and countries have to encourage the growth of the data-driven economy, for the benefit of long-term prosperity .  And that means the old models of regulation won’t work in the 21st century economy.

Going forward,  one key question will how to regulate phone service as providers shift to a VoIP model.  Internet-based services were historically unregulated, and it may very well be that we get more innovation and growth if we pare back the regulatory structure on phone service as part of the shift to VoIP.

From that perspective,  California’s action may hold lessons for the rest of the country.

*The figure of 466,000 App Economy jobs was, of course, were drawn from my February 2012 paper Where the Jobs Are: The App Economy

But an alternative explanation is that the government is underestimating the growth rate of real GDP by undercounting the strength of consumer data consumption. A new paper from PPI, Beyond Goods and Services: The (Unmeasured) Rise of the Data-Driven Economy, makes the case that consumer consumption of Internet-related activities–email, video, social media, games, maps, and so forth–is rising much faster than the BEA numbers show. Once we correctly adjust for consumer data consumption, real GDP growth goes up about 0.6 percentage points.

So if the official GDP growth for the 3rd quarter is 2%, then the actual growth growth, adjusted for consumer data consumption, may be closer to 2.5%. That may help explain the drop in the unemployment rate.

To see why the BEA is underestimating the strength of consumer data consumption, take a look at the chart below. This chart, drawn directly from BEA data, tracks real consumer purchases of “Internet access”–both mobile and wired.

Please note that according to these BEA figures, Americans are consuming less internet access in real terms than a year ago. That can’t be right. To put it a different way, the official GDP statistics are describing a world in which Americans are retreating from the Internet. That’s not the world we live in.

Because this is “real” consumption, the effect of price changes is already taken out of the statistics. And as we explain in the paper, the “missing” internet access does not show up anywhere else.