What is YOUR most innovative city in the world today?
And, should you move there? Well, no that doesn't mean move to Tokyo, NYC or London or ...Paris. There's rubbish in the streets how come they are doing so well? What does innovation mean micro-level?
You can check out the current 2022-2023 answers here, based on this year’s post-pandemic trends. The answer is Tokyo. #1 for some time.
If you haven’t seen the spectacular 2022-2023 rankings, and you don’t know which way the world is heading stop and check those out!
The answer below, in at least one long-time frame analysis, is also Tokyo.
But should you move there? Should you relocate to #1?
Yes and no.’ And what other cities should you consider if cherry blossoms, super-clean subways, Shinkansen, sushi and small apartments are not your thing?
Read on.
NOTE VALUED READER - We have a special request if you wish to do a blog post, LinkedIn post, or 3 tweets about interesting things you learnt from our Innovation Cities™ Index this year - and email us… we will send you a free file with 8 years top line rankings to do your own analysis. Just reply to this email with your link!
Only real condition is no negativity/whingeing towards us or any cities. No complaining about politicians or our data or others.
There is always something positive to say!
And if you can find an original insight our analysts like, we may throw in a bonus file.
This will give you the Innovation Cities™ Index headline results for 8 years, so you can compare the results).
Not the detailed indicators, which are available for sale as data or benchmark reports.
Background on opinions
The range of opinions we get on results of our model are startling.
Back in 2013 when we had NYC as #2 behind Boston an editor at the WSJ said to me.
“How can New York be innovative? It’s so dirty and the subways are so out of date? (or words to that effect). I can think of…”
Fast forward a decade, and now every other ranking has New York high ranked.
It’s because we were the first to model cities and innovation. The Innovation Cities™ Index has ranked 500 cities for almost a decade now, and was launched in 2007.
Forget any of the recent myriad me-too rankings.
(There are a lot of ‘me-too’ rankings. They come and go. They also don’t shed much insight despite their beautiful PDFs compiled by inexperienced data scientists, and fronted by a couple of ‘figurehead’ spokespeople who have limited knowledge of the technical city aspects. There are a lot lot lot technical aspects.)
Yes I am biased, my favourite question is who sponsored the rankings?!
We at 2ThinkNow have received some Australian government assistance in various ways, but no Australian cities have won; and we are not reliant on Australia.
We at 2ThinkNow provide independent, and consistent, results. Without worrying about what everyone may say. This is largely funded by data, training or report sales.
We have been usually first since 2007.
Stable ranking methodology
So, because of that being first, we can answer this question absolutely and definitely. We can look at our model, and do a ‘Stable Rank’. That’s a 5-year average ranking across a wide variety of assumptions and scenarios. Two years of that, were pandemic!
The advantage is this is more stable for a model (where that is a benefit) and covers a wide range of social and economic cycles.
Based on that 5-year average of our city rankings (4 actual releases), the stable answer to top 10 most innovative cities in the world overall are:
Tokyo
New York
London
Singapore
Boston
Paris
San Francisco - San Jose
Los Angeles
Seoul
Chicago
We think the ‘5 year Stable rank’ is possibly the best way to get a stable year on year result for past results - across multiple conditions. Note this ranking does not predict the future, and the current year results would be better for that.
Paris sits stably there in both rankings. This is due in part to the French market position as ‘challenger’' in many industries where they are not number one.
And invariably the head office and top staff are in Paris! The ideas flow from Paris, which is arguably one of the world’s perennial cities.
What about longer term?
And for an even more stable answer let us use the long-term average ranks since 2014! A true ‘Stable Rank’.
New York
London
Tokyo
Boston
San Francisco - San Jose
Paris
Singapore
Seoul
Los Angeles
Chicago
Same contenders, but also, long term large cities with infrastructure.
All have metro/subways and mass transit. All have world class museums and art. Sporting.
Arguably the 5-year Stable Rank is the sweet spot for you doing past-looking studies or research.
What do the differences mean?
Now go back a few years before these results, and it’s doubtful Singapore or Seoul would have made those lists. They have worked their way up and displaced probably some European or U.S. capitals.
How did this come to be? What does it tell us?
Well, the split is Asia (3), Europe (2) and North America (5).
So, Asia is winning at the expense of Europe. Until this year, when Europe started fighting back (in part due to worsening U.S. innovation policy under Biden, who is largely focussed on peripheral social issues when seen from an innovation view).
Hopefully geo-political realities blunt the Biden administrations more fringe social-engineering tendencies, and redirect U.S. to its traditional innovation strengths.
The U.S. has innovation in it’s DNA. Always has, since inception as a nation.
So 4 years from now, is it more likely to be Asia (4 or 5!), Europe 2 or 3, North America (2 or 3) and just maybe, Mid-East (1)?
Or will North America resurge, and re-embrace technical innovation and merit?
After a Vietnam era drift, the 1980s U.S. came back with a roar under Reagan.
So it’s not inconceivable. Never bet against the U.S. as many in policy say.
Of course, China is the challenger, and it seems likely Chinese and other Asian cities will in coming years enter the top 10.
Isn’t that fascinating? Doesn’t it get you excited?
Doesn’t it tell you our world is changing… while the list of cities seemingly stays remarkably stable?
Should you relocate?
So, should you move to these cities?
Knowing nothing these top 10 cities are great bets. Top-ranked cities are where the action are. Right now. Without regard to specific industries.
But you can model better. With city data.
Not necessarily, as sometimes a smaller city, or a Spanish speaking city, or a Mandarin speaking city is what you need.
Sometimes, you need a tech city. A city that has a pool of more than one million programmers and associated professionals - like Mumbai.
In other words, there is some other data point greater than the total innovation community, or innovation conditions.
This could be language, cluster, number of potential customers, disposable income, music tastes, number of professionals, wage level, age bands, gender balance, household size, religion or many other requirements.
You really need that detailed city-level data for your use case.
Other interesting cities
Why? Sometimes you want a capital of cyber-security (Tel Aviv), a capital of sporting innovation (Melbourne), a capital of whiskey (Scottish cities, or even, Hobart, for the brave).
For example: start a new whiskey in Scotland? Or Hobart? Or Manchester (dark horse). Well in some cases the more fringe locations may have an advantage. Look at the new gin distillers!
Did you know Hobart is a also bit of a foodie capital? Gothenburg, Sweden has been great as an under-the-radar start-up city. There are small Japanese cities people ignore, Baku had leadership in a few indicators to be top 1% in the world.
These cities are not top 10 but they have great niches.
We can detect up and coming cities when costs are lower!
You do, really need to know your research question.
But we can give you offbeat and profitable answers to these questions.
That’s why no matter what your question, we are here at 2ThinkNow to answer it.
Bit of Background
What we decided to do back in 2007 was start building a model.
It would be so large and so ambitious no one could easily duplicate it, without millions in investment, some wizardry and a lot of specialised skills. It uses some fancy maths and structuring.
Of course, we had to with a lot of tailwinds.
And allow for the almost total lack of city level data at the time.
So, if you want to know the future, ask us to interpret our ranking for you.
Or, to provide underlying data.
Interesting fact, we have worked on over 40 rankings, including many of our competitors at different stages. So, the more you know…
After all, do you ask the graduate copying the ideas?
Photo by Pawel Nolbert on Unsplash (earlier original email version)
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash (later version added)