The Best States Methodology

CRN's second annual "Best States" project covers all 50 states and is a compilation of 35 measures collected from a variety of independent third-party sources and original research.

The analysis covers a broad range of criteria grouped into six categories: labor and employment costs, workforce experience and education, taxes and regulations, innovation and growth, business opportunity, and quality of life/personal cost of living.

CRN's unique solution provider audience has a very specific set of needs and in order to appropriately weight the importance of each criteria, CRN conducted a study among 221 technology solution providers in July 2014. This exclusive research identifies the importance that technology solution providers place on each of the criteria measured. The solution provider importance weightings were then applied to each metric in order to calculate each state's final score and ranking.

When determining the factors that most influence where technology solution providers would start a new business, the primary focus is on those criteria that are related to economic expansion, broadband access, areas that attract and have higher populations of fast growth, small and midsize companies and new business startups when selecting a state in which to start a new company.

While the majority of this year's analysis criteria has remained consistent from the 2013 analysis, some adjustments and updates have been made to the criteria and the survey factors.

PUBLISHED SEPT. 8, 2014