Earlier this year, Reuters set out to find the top 100 most innovative universities across the globe. See the list here (scroll down to the bottom of the page) with Stanford University, MIT and Harvard University on top.

Each candidate university was evaluated using various indicators including:

how often a university’s patent applications were granted;

how many patents were filed with global patent offices and local authorities;

how often the university’s patents were cited by others;

Universities were also evaluated in terms of how often their research papers were cited by patents; and the percentage of articles that featured a co-author from industry.Glad to see that “innovation” and “creativity” are not just buzzwords in the U.S.

52% of the universities were outside of the U.S. Some of the interesting findings are:

Japan with 9 universities had the most # of universities on the list after the U.S. (Osaka, Kyoto, U. of Tokyo, Tohoku, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Keio, Kyushu, Nagoya, Hokkaido)

with 9 universities had the most # of universities on the list after the U.S. (Osaka, Kyoto, U. of Tokyo, Tohoku, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Keio, Kyushu, Nagoya, Hokkaido) Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) and Pohang University of Science and Technology (both in South Korea) ranked #s 10 and 12 respectively. (Very impressive)

and (both in South Korea) ranked #s 10 and 12 respectively. (Very impressive) Imperial College London is ranked the most innovative university in Europe. (#11)

I am surprised to see only one university from China (Tsinghua University) and none from India.

There are other findings and articles. But this shows that creativity and innovation is becoming a global behavior. Yes, there is going to be some countries ahead of others. But the talent will be far more spread-out than it is today.

I do hope over time, creative thinking and innovation does become part of the curricula for the students. In partnership with SUNY Buffalo State, we’ve performed a study. We’ve noticed that, in average, student’s Creativity Quotient (CQ) is lower than the industry average. More can be found here.

As educators, we do have to train and encourage the students to be more creative, innovative and think outside-of-the-box. After-all, these students are the future leaders.

image credit: creative commons





Wait! Before you go.

Choose how you want the latest innovation content delivered to you:

Farzad H. Eskafi is an entrepreneur with 15+ years of experience in Education and SaaS industry. Currently, he is the co-founder and CEO of an NSF-funded company called SparcIt. SparcIt is an analytic company and the pioneer of automated and large-scale creativity assessment.