Why does that mean, the Midwest/Ohio is "no where close to being the next silicone valley." The "e" in "silicone" is yours.
Non-competes are flimsy at best and it really comes down to your ability to litigate.
Also, we can't even type "silicon" properly :D
My non-anecdotal evidence: https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/18/silicon-valley-keeps-winni...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/silicon-va...
The Midwest in general, and Ohio in particular, has some great institutions that attract great talent from around the world, i.e. The Cleveland Clinic. The region/Ohio also educates some of the top talent.
While I'm not convinced they will be a viable competitor to Silicon Valley, it is possible. The region's ability to retain talent is the most critical component. Non-competes can make that more difficult. I don't think non-competes alone preclude the region from competing with SV.
I'm from Ohio, I live in California, and I would put a higher priority on weather than non-competes.
And of course as you said, our brutal, brutal winters.
I was more agreeing with knoepfle's comment in rolling my eyes every time one of these articles pops up and gets shared all over my twitter, linkedin and facebook feeds. There's many reasons a lot of our talent flees the west coast or Chicago or NYC, and we'd rather read these fluff pieces instead of acknowledging and trying to fix the issues that would keep them here.