Boston ranked top city for innovation

Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Beijing have been named as the five leading ‘hotbed’ cities for business innovation and transformation in a new global study.

Hickey & Associates (H&A), a global real estate consulting and site selection firm, assessed global markets on innovation by analysing thousands of datapoints across more than 300 markets for its Global Innovation Hubs Report.

Cities leading the way

The report ranks cities in order to convey which locations are leading the way in key industries as well as indicating their location value on a regional and global level.

H&A’s evaluation sought to recognise markets around the world that are on the forefront of creating new ideas, methods, and products that fuel growth and positively change the economic and socio-political landscape for the future.

“By analysing so many different data points, we were able to assess factors such as patent applications per capita, number of top universities, and venture capital funding"

“While our report reaffirms the dominance of certain markets such as Boston, San Francisco, and New York as being hubs of innovation and growth, our research also identified markets not traditionally viewed as innovation hubs such as Hartford, Philadelphia, and San Diego,” said Jason Hickey, president of Hickey & Associates.

“By analysing so many different data points, we were able to assess factors such as patent applications per capita, number of top universities, and venture capital funding that allowed us to sort through the data to identify true hubs of innovation.”

The four major factors identified within the research highlight that global innovation hubs are:

• Talent magnets: cities and markets that have a young and growing “millennial” population with a multi-national profile and which have a workplace culture that is vibrant and provides a good live/work/play culture
• Innovative and transformative: locations with a high concentration, frequency and number of start-ups and patents
• Learning and collaborative ecosystems: towns, cities and metropolitan clusters that lead in research and development (R&D), often linked with universities and associated with business and academic networks that encourage and celebrate innovation and knowledge sharing
• Venture capital hotbeds: locations and markets that attract high levels of investment into businesses, start-ups and R&D.

The report also details regional leaders and ranks the markets across categories such as patents, education, population demographics, research and investment figures, to determine which locations were not only showing strong innovation today but are also investing in innovation for the future.

“What our findings underline is that international corporations need to look at factors other than simply cost when considering locations for business expansion,” added Hickey. “The hubs and clusters of innovation that we have identified will drive economic growth regionally, nationally and internationally in the next few decades.”

The full report, along with an interactive tool that allows users to sort through and interact with the data and rankings, is available for download here: H&A 2019 Global Innovation Hubs Rankings and Report

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