The Global Innovation Index (GII) is a leading tool for understanding country-level determinants of innovation. While the national scale is useful for many researchers and decision-makers, a comprehensive index for use at the sub-national scale is needed to understand the regional differentials in innovation that exist within a country. To address the need for greater visibility into sub-national innovation differentials, this project, led by Academic Network Fellow Courtney Bower, explores the creation of a sub-national innovation index, drawing on the structure and methodology of the GII. Termed the Sub-National Innovation Index (SNII), this project aims to develop a regionally-focused innovation index for use with the eight Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) regions of the United States.
Below is a first look at the project: its goals, roadmap, construction, and initial results. The initial results include a single BEA region in radar chart form, along with details for how these results were obtained. The chosen BEA region is the U.S. Northeast, which is composed of the following six states: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Indicator data comes primarily from 2021, though the entire year range of the sourced data is from 2017 to 2023. Importantly, the process and results of this project are tentative, and the final results for each of the eight BEA regions, along with any updates to the methodology or indicator construction, will be presented in a subsequent post.
Note: This is an independent study and has no endorsement or linkage with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Courtney Bower is a Ph.D. Student in Regional Science at Cornell University and a Fellow at the Portulans Institute. His dissertation research focuses on the economic impacts of transitions to circular and hydrogen economies from a regional innovation systems perspective.
