Executive’s Desk: Why New Mexico is a national leader in entrepreneurship

New Mexico has emerged as a national leader in entrepreneurship, and Albuquerque is a major beneficiary. Taking that leadership to new levels of recognition depends in part on seeing both the state and city as centers of extraordinary assets that offer models for replication nationwide.

Those assets came clearly into focus at the University of New Mexico’s Business and Economic Summit in November, where UNM President Garrett Stokes highlighted many of them. In the last two years, for instance, New Mexico has achieved seven top national rankings in measures that reinforce the state’s appeal to entrepreneurs.

What’s most impressive is the extraordinary range of strengths that those seven rankings alone represent. They include the following:

• New Mexico is ranked No. 1 by Stanford professor Ilya Strebulaev for most likely having a university produce a “unicorn.”
• Santa Fe (No. 1 for smaller cities), Albuquerque (No. 1 for big cities) and Las Cruces (No. 8 for smaller cities) rank highly for the best places to live and work as a filmmaker, according to a recent MovieMaker list. 
• Albuquerque is No. 6 on Quantum Insider’s list of future quantum ecosystems.
• New Mexico is No. 6 in the nation for year-over-year growth in manufacturing employment in 2024-25, according to the New Mexico Economic Development Department. 
• Albuquerque is listed as a new job hotspot by The Wall Street Journal. 
• New Mexico is the 14th most innovative state, according to a 2025 study conducted by WalletHub.
• The University of New Mexico is one of four universities honored with a 2024 Innovation & Economic Prosperity Award by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, recognizing UNM’s “exemplary initiatives spurring innovation, entrepreneurship, and technology-based economic development.”

On top of that, New Mexico has the second-largest stand-alone sovereign wealth fund organization in the nation, energizing economic innovation further. It is in the top 35 globally.

Not only is that a remarkable breadth of strengths, but it’s a preeminent set of experts making those assessments — from Quantum Insider to WalletHub to The Wall Street Journal, among others. They are not just citing New Mexico but elevating the state’s national recognition.

Those rankings, in addition, do not reflect even more recent advances. In May, for instance, the New Mexico Economic Development Department increased its commitment to economic development in science and technology by establishing a Technology and Innovation Office along with more than $90 million in new funding. In September, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed an agreement between the state of New Mexico and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to establish the Quantum Frontier Project, a new partnership designed to accelerate the development, testing and validation of emerging quantum technologies.

Capitalizing on all of these strengths is an array of national models advancing entrepreneurship in New Mexico. With the leadership of Lujan Grisham, EDD created in 2023 an Office of Entrepreneurship. New Mexico played a pioneering role in that regard, becoming just the second state to create such an entity.

InnovateABQ, the 7-acre site located midway between downtown Albuquerque and the UNM campus, provides an additional national model. With Lobo Rainforest, a six-story mixed-use facility, as its centerpiece, the complex brings together entrepreneurs and their emerging businesses and sparks catalytic interactions.

InnovateABQ is, in turn, the centerpiece for UNM’s leadership in combining the academic strengths of the university with the research capacities of nearby national laboratories, including Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory, and with the business strengths of leading companies with facilities in New Mexico. With structured monthly meetings with the national labs to maximize activity, UNM has more than 250 jointly owned inventions with Sandia Labs and over 50 jointly owned inventions with LANL.

UNM Rainforest Innovations, the university’s technology transfer and economic development organization, also partners with Right to Start, the national nonprofit championing entrepreneurship as a civic priority, to identify barriers to entrepreneurship and explore ways to remove them. In addition, with support from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, UNMRI created the New Mexico Tribal Entrepreneurship Enhancement Program, seeking to enhance opportunity, wealth and job growth through entrepreneurship in tribal communities.

At the UNM business summit in November, the theme was “New Mexico the Entrepreneurial.” That theme is derived from our partner Right to Start’s national campaign, “America the Entrepreneurial,” which highlights the leadership of New Mexico in a national context. That leadership will continue to grow — to the benefit of Albuquerque and all of the state.

As Barbara Rodríguez, UNM’s interim provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs, said in her closing remarks at the summit, “New Mexico is a powerful place to be — and, I would argue, it is the very best place to be. … We are on the cusp of incredible things.”