GrowGlobally.org

Those of you tasked with charting regional “hot spots” around the world that might offer better locations for growing your business, please take a look at an interesting map tool developed by McKinsey and Company.

This interactive map separates Asian, European, and North American cities who demonstrate both growing momentum and diversity of innovations as well as tracking those losing ground.  This is calculated by the growth of patents registered from these cities as well as sheer number of different types of organizations and patent sectors in those cities.

McKinsey groups what they call “innovation clusters” according to their dynamicism:

• Dynamic Oceans – the most vast and deep (e.g. San Francisco/Oakland, USA; Taipei, Taiwan)
• Hot Springs – small and fast growing (e.g. Regensburg, Germany; Suwon, South Korea)
• Silent Lakes – old and slow growing (e.g. Chicago, New York, USA; Paris, France; Tokyo, Japan)
• Shrinking Pools – negative or flat growth (e.g. Manheim, Germany; Shizuoka, Japan;  Colorado Springs, USA)

The imagery is quite sobering.  If innovation is the key to long term growth, then this map may show how the balance of power among regional players will change in the coming decades.

As we have presented in previous posts, three excellent macro business, economic, innovation, social, and demographic trend barometers include the annual surveys of the World Bank’s Doing Business, World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Reports, and Transparency International’s Corruption Index.