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The Smörgåsbord Standard: Sweden Startups and Why the Rest of the World Should Be Taking Notes

Monday, 01 June 2026 by Paul O'Brien

My dad’s side is Irish, and I have leaned into that identity for most of my life. Then André Persson shared an article, and I started thinking about my mom’s side of the family; Swedish emigrants who brought something with them to the United States that I have never fully examined. What exactly did Sweden

Published in Regional Development

13 Comments

The Stack AI Can’t Replace: Why Infrastructure is the Future of Work

Saturday, 30 May 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Every few months someone publishes a new piece declaring that AI will automate everything, that code is no longer a profession, that “vibe coding” (the practice of describing what you want to an AI assistant and accepting whatever it generates) is now a legitimate engineering strategy. Last week, White House AI & Crypto Czar, David

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Published in AI, FinTech, Infrastructure as a Service

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The Workforce Lab: Milwaukee Startups are Uncovering the Future of Work

Tuesday, 26 May 2026 by Paul O'Brien

I’ve been turning some attention to more sector specific specialties, and having just covered the future of work in the context of energy, thought I’d take a look at it explicitly in terms of working out how we’ll work. Doing so, Milwaukee surprised. This is the city that invented the typewriter, commercialized the motorcycle, built

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Published in Regional Development

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Building the Energy Future While the Rest of America Argues About It: America’s Energy Belt

Monday, 25 May 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Startup ecosystems do not happen at the city level, no matter how many branding exercises a mayor commissions or how many innovation districts get ribbon-cut in the same news cycle. They happen at the regional level, with sector specialization that compounds across geography where varied strengths and weaknesses are found throughout; the people writing the

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Published in AI, Data, Economic Development, Energy

12 Comments

The Hidden Policy Crisis Behind America’s Startup Decline

Friday, 22 May 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Article HighlightsResearch across Cato, Brookings, Mercatus, Kauffman, the SBA, and the Congressional Research Service increasingly points to the same conclusionWhat the CFPB Paper Says, my read, BrieflyThis Matters GREATLY Because Real Startups Are DisappearingWhat Is Causing It: The Pattern Across IdeologiesWhat Else Cato Has Been Publishing (And Why You Should Care)The Economics, Not the PoliticsWhat

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Published in Economic Development, Startup Ecosystems

23 Comments

The Year Apple Was Founded, a Supercomputer Changed Science, and Nobody Called Any of It a “Startup”

Thursday, 21 May 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Article HighlightsA birthday note for everyone who loves someone who never stopped building thingsWhat “Startup” Meant in 1976 (Hint: Nothing)The Machines That Defined the Year I Was BornThe Capital Problem That Almost Strangled All of ItWhat My Parents Gave to Me, and What I Found in the Wreckage of AmbitionWhat I’ve Learned MattersWhat Fifty Years

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Published in Economic Development

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Iowa Startups Built the First Computer in a Basement. Now…

Monday, 18 May 2026 by Paul O'Brien

That statement needs to be explained; wasn’t ENIAC in 1945?? Some say Charles Babbage created the concept of a programmable computer in 1822. This is one that doesn’t make the articles of the history of the computer, and it should. Between 1939 and 1942, in the basement of the physics building at Iowa State College,

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Published in Regional Development

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