The plains have long exported two things they could ill afford to lose: their brightest graduates and their best ideas. Research parks and innovation campuses attached to the region's universities aim to keep both at home, offering laboratories, offices and mentorship where a promising bit of university research can grow into a company that hires plains workers and pays plains taxes.

From the Lab to the Ledger

The model is straightforward: put researchers, startups, investors and established firms in proximity, add the support a young company needs, and let the collisions produce new ventures. Fictional startups like Aldergrove Agtech, spun out of a university lab, develop plains-made solutions to plains problems, from crop sensors to cold-weather batteries.

From the almanac's reckoning:

• University research parks aim to commercialize plains research.
• Proximity of startups, investors and firms is meant to spark new ventures.
• The goal is to keep graduates and their ideas in the region.

The successes are still modest, and building a startup culture on the prairie takes patience, but the direction is set. The almanac counts the innovation campus among the plains' bets on its own future — an effort to grow companies from the same ground that grows the wheat.