Last week, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation released its annual Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurship, detailing “new venture creation” in the United States through 2016. The index reported that the rate of entrepreneurship in America held steady last year, up sharply from lows reached during the Great Recession.

Also included are measures across all 50 US states, the40 largest  metropolitan areas, and along various dimensions of entrepreneur characteristics (race, gender, nativity, education, and age). Colorado ranked sixth in terms of “startup density” (new firm formations per capita) and Denver was tenth among the largest metropolitan areas for the same measure.

But, these rankings mask important details—they doesn’t distinguish between growth-oriented entrepreneurship and small business formation (this distinction matters for public policy and for economic growth), and the geographic boundaries may be too broad. Fair enough, data limitations abound for this high-level view of activity, and Kauffman provides an informative, timely, service no less.

What remains clear is that density matters a great deal for growth-driven, innovative enterprise, and we can learn something from the places that continually produce these types of businesses.