US Chamber ranking: Maryland No. 1 for technology and entrepreneurship

The Miami Heat might not be able to three-peat in the NBA Finals, but Maryland just took home a third straight title of its own.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation again named Maryland as the top state in its Technology and Entrepreneurship category, beating out Colorado, Washington and Utah in the foundation’s annual Enterprising States study (PDF).
Maryland’s high-tech firms account for 7.57 percent of the state’s businesses, according to the report, behind only Colorado and Virginia. The Technology and Entrepreneurship ranking, however, also weighed factors including job growth and academic research and development.
Maryland ranked first in terms of academic R&D’s impact on the state economy.
Maryland is home to both the National Security Agency at Fort Meade and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel.
An abundance of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) jobs buoyed Maryland’s high marks in other categories.
“There are 217,000 STEM workers in the state, accounting for 7.7% of the total workforce, the highest concentration of STEM workers in the nation,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation officials wrote.
Maryland also ranked third in the nation in the study’s Talent Pipeline category.
Read the Maryland section of the report here