Manufacturing, you may have heard, is dying--but startups and small businesses across other industries are finding new ways to fuel American innovation and create jobs. Think cloud computing, software engineering, logistics, and even product design--arenas once dominated by large corporations.

"Small- and medium-size-business owners can take advantage of technology that was previously available only to large companies," says Jeremy Bodenhamer, co-founder and CEO of Santa Barbara, California-based ShipHawk, which makes and sells shipping software. He's part of a new "supply chain economy" that's creating more jobs, hiring skilled workers, and paying higher wages, according to recent research by MIT's Mercedes Delgado and Harvard's Karen Mills, former head of the Small Business Administration. Startups working in this supply chain "are innovative, and are creating an increasing number of high-wage jobs," says Mills. "These are good jobs of the future."