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The Innovation Index project - Background As economies globalize, attention among industrial-world policy-makers has focused increasingly on supporting economic innovation – keeping their economies at the cutting edge, as older industries and products commoditize and move offshore.
The problem However, there is no known silver bullet for doing this. Capital formation, university R&D, patenting and other IP, labor force development, general education, even quality of life have been the focus of policy. At the same time, system outputs from the innovation system have proved hard to measure: beyond patents and some indicators of economic growth, little consensus exists.
Objectives The Innovation Index project will address these issues by providing policymakers with tools to benchmark regions against comparable other regions (cities, states, regional markets, collections of postal codes), using a large collection of data sets embedded in a scalable database, and accessible online. Subsequently, researchers can analyze the data, to investigate leading indicators of innovation, and causal relationships. Initial deliverables include:
What makes this project different? Five key advances:
Project timeline
Project team Led by Dr.Robin Gaster, North Atlantic Research and lead researcher on National Academy of Science SBIR project.
Funding Funding for Phase I provided by the Advanced Technology Program, National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Walk-through Click here to download a PowerPoint walk-through for the Innovation Index web site. please view in full screen.
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