About Innovation Intelligence

Though the structure of the Innovation Index is unchanged with this third version of the index, a few changes have been made to the measures and indexes for consistency and to use the most recent data available. Measures that were 10-year changes or averages in the Innovation 2.0 have been decreased to five-year changes or averages. Measures that were three-year changes or averages have been increased to five-year changes or averages. Finally, there were a couple measures in the prior version that used data all the way back to 2002. These have also been changed to five-year averages.

Available for the first time in II3 are state-level indexes, which are provided so users can compare a smaller region (such as a county or metro) to the state in which it’s located.

All the details concerning the specific changes that were made to individual measures and the rationales for each are described in the Driving Regional Innovation: Supplemental Report for Innovation Intelligence.

The Innovation Index provides a set of analytic tools that can help regional leaders reach a strong consensus on regional strategic direction. One can also use these data to see and understand a region’s weaknesses, strengths and potential. In this way, data and analysis can inform stakeholders’ collective action toward a common vision and can guide complex decision-making at a regional-level by analyzing a region’s assets or liabilities in detail.

The vast majority of the data items used in II3 are county-based and can be downloaded by county, metro and more.

The headline Innovation Intelligence Index is calculated from five core indexes. The structure and the calculation of the index is hierarchical, or built up, pyramid-like, from a large foundation of data to the single headline index.

The “headline” index—the one, high-level summary index—is comprised of five major categorical indexes organized thematically, which we refer to as core indexes. Those five core indexes are built up from several sub-indexes that are built up from several measures that are also organized thematically along more precisely defined concepts.       

List of Measures by Core Index

• Human Capital & Knowledge Creation
• Business Dynamics
• Business Profile
• Employment & Productivity
• Economic Well-Being

The Innovation Index headline number combines the five major core indexes. Each index is weighted equally, by 20 percent each.

View the reports for documentation of all of the measures and their formulas »

Indexes attempt to present complex data simply, somewhat like a dashboard gauge. Understanding what the dashboard is showing may require interpretation. The headline index, core indexes and sub-indexes score a region or county relative to the United States on a continuous scale. Users may prefer to compare their regions of interest against other benchmark or peer regions that share characteristics like population density, access to transportation infrastructure or presence of federal research laboratories.

Additionally, the headline index has no simple, unambiguous definition because, at the time of this writing, there is no established statistical relationship between the indexes and desired outcomes. Rather, the headline index is a collection of measures—both input and output—baked into one at-a-glance number. The headline index is an aggregation of underlying core indexes for innovation inputs and outputs. Traditionally, inputs and outputs would not be combined into a single figure. One might suggest that higher levels of innovation inputs would result in higher levels of outputs—they would move together—but it should be acknowledged that the headline index is an aggregation of many contrasting parts that may or may not move in tandem.

The measures for inputs and outputs in the headline and core indexes are theoretically linked. The fact that the measures that measure innovation inputs and outputs in an earlier version of the index tend to move together offers statistical support for joining the two concepts into a single composite, headline index.

Innovation Intelligence uses counties as the primary geography and as the building blocks for regions, including metropolitan areas and economic development districts.