I'm posting this blog from beautiful Sioux Falls, South Dakota where, with my N2TEC Institute co-founder Tim Stearns,  I'm helping 9 entrepreneurial teams launch their new technology businesses. I can hear the response from all of you--South Dakota, do people actually live there?  Well, yes they do and unlike most of the rest of you, they have stubbornly refused to participate in the recession.  In fact, South Dakota was recently named in "the most entrepreneur friendly state in the Small Business Survival Index put out by the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (California ranked 49 and New York 48 - so much for the notion that nothing happens in flyover country).  This organization ranks the policy environment of all 50 states plus the District of Columbia.

So why South Dakota?  When you think about starting a new business, you realize that, government policy aside, it's a pretty risky venture wherever you start.  However, given the current anti-business environment, it's even more important to find a location that really wants your business.  The state has no income tax, personal or corporate, the lowest unemployment insurance rates, and boasts the lowest property crime rate in the nation.  Despite the recession, it maintains one of lowest unemployment rates in the nation, 4.5%. South Dakota is also a "right to work" state, which means that employees are not compelled to join unions or pay dues.  

I've spent the last week in Sioux Falls in one of dozens of trips I've taken to South Dakota during the past five years.  The city has some of the nicest people on the planet.  Even though the majority of the country tends to overlook the states located in the northern plains, South Dakota is home to one of the most innovative medical research institutes in the country--Sanford Research--focusing on pediatric diseases and funded to the tune of over $450 million from local entrepreneur T. Denny Sanford, and the next Federal deep underground research laboratory in the Black Hills, where already one Nobel prize in physics was won in 2002 (see picture for Nobel Prize winner Ray Davis inspecting his neutron detector while it was under construction).

So the next time you fly between New York and California, remember that below you is a place you have probably never thought to visit, a state whose pioneering spirit is still very much alive.  It's reflected every day in cutting edge science and a burgeoning entrepreneurial population.  .Check it out.