Home > business and economics, intellectual property, Martin Prosperity Institute, urban issues > Is your Region … Creative, Innovative, Productive, … or Just Populated?

Is your Region … Creative, Innovative, Productive, … or Just Populated?

October 19, 2012

Is your Region … Creative, Innovative, Productive, … or Just Populated? (PDF)
Source: Martin Prosperity Institute

Previous Martin Prosperity Institute Insights have looked at the relationship between the population and GDP share for U.S. metropolitan areas. This Insight will look deeper into these findings, by looking at metros in relation to two additional variables-awarded patents and Creative Class occupations. While previous Insights have looked at metro population and GDP shares in relation to U.S. totals, this Insight will examine the percentage shares of each of these four variables relation to the U.S. metro total.

The top 5 metros that contribute the most to the U.S Metro Creative Class are New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington and Boston. These 5 metros contribute to 23.33% of the total U.S. metro Creative Class occupation total. The top 10 largest Creative Class metros contribute to 35.04% of the total share and the top 25 contribute to 53.09%. These metros contribute a higher percentage to the total Creative Class metro total than the top 25 most populated metros contribute to total population (49.19%), but less of a percentage than the top 25 GDP metros contribute to total GDP (57.09%).

The top 5 metros with the most awarded patents are San Jose, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Seattle. These top 5 metros contribute to 31.83% of the total awarded patents in U.S. metros (top 10: 47.03%, top 25: 68.39%!). This percentage is much higher than the percentages that the top Creative, populated and GDP metros account for. Established tech centers like Seattle, San Jose and San Francisco have much higher shares of awarded patents than they do GDP, population or Creative Class. Found on this list was also that metros such as Detroit, and Austin contribute more to the total patents, than much higher populated and GDP generating metros such as Houston and Dallas.

When looking at Creative Class share and awarded patents, it is once again apparent that the larger metros generally punch above their weight. This is especially true when looking at patents, as a small number of metros account for an astonishingly large percentage of the total U.S. metropolitan share.

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Categories: business and economics, intellectual property, Martin Prosperity Institute, urban issues
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