Innovation is a function of you and the people you work with, not where you live. You should be looking at the team you will be working on, not the reputation of a physical place or company. If you fail to do that, you will be disappointed when the reality inevitably doesn't match the hype. Nearly every state has loads of smart and innovative people, despite what HN's regional bias would lead you to believe. The exception would be the very tiny states, but they still have smart people, just fewer of them.
The people you work with (in person) is to a significant extent a function of where you live, though, and what the team is allowed to attempt is even more so.
Maybe there are a hundred smart and innovative fluorine chemists in your state, but 30 of them are assholes, 20 retired, 40 already have jobs too good to hire them away from, and the other 10 aren't allowed to do any lab work because of NIMBYs or because your legislature associates chemistry primarily with Breaking Bad. (That's a big problem in California today, but it wasn't 50 years ago.)
