For more than 25 years, the Inc. 500 has been the essential guide to the most entrepreneurial companies in America. Now we're digging deeper to explore an even broader cross section of entrepreneurial America. To complete this task, for almost a year we unleashed more than 70 researchers, reporters, editors and interns on the project, and we enlisted the help of dozens of business organizations and trade associations to boldly go where no news organization had gone before, to identify and profile the 5,000 fastest growing companies in America...

...We'll be continuing our analysis for months, but...[f]or us, the launch of the Inc. 5,000 marks a new era, an era where the discovery will be ongoing and participatory. In September we will launch IncBizNet, our social network for private companies.

Rhode Island tech companies that made the 2007 Inc. 5000: