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The study, co-authored and led by Viktor Lázár, was the central topic of a European Parliament policy roundtable on regional competitiveness and technological innovation, and the sub-national innovation competition between North America and Europe. The student of the Centre for Next Technological Futures, who is currently spending his three-month research fellowship at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) think tank in Washington DC, is not only one of the authors of the study The Transatlantic Subnational Innovation Competitiveness Index, but also the author of the data visualization for the research.

According to the study, although Massachusetts and California lead the index, the German Länder perform better on average than most US Member States.

Although three of the top five subnational regions in the innovation competitiveness index are in the U.S., but none of the top performers in the three innovation component categories are in the U.S. Despite the lagging of the median Italian region, Lombardy does exhibit outstanding globalization performance being ranked #1 in that category.

The goal of the research is to assess subnational innovation performance of powerful economies as the United States, Germany, Canada, and Italy. The index consists of 13 indicators which are grouped into 3 categories:

  • Knowledge-Based Workforce: Indicators measure the educational attainment of the workforce; immigration of knowledge workers; employment in professional, technical, and scientific (PTS) activities; and manufacturing sector productivity.
  • Globalization: Indicators measure high-tech exports and inward FDI.
  • Innovation Capacity: Indicators measure a state’s share of households subscribing to broadband Internet, expenditures on R&D, the number of R&D personnel, the creation of new businesses, patent output, the extent of progress toward decarbonization, and VC investment.

The results of the report were presented on the 14th of November in the European Parliament by the co-authors of the report - Stephen Ezell (Director for Global Innovation Policy at the ITIF), Axel Plünnecke (Head of Cluster Education, Immigration and Innovation at the German Economic Institute), and Stefano da Empoli (president of I-Com, the Institute for Competitiveness).

For further details, please read the report.