Basis of the Innovation Cities™ Index final city score.
The 3 Factors are designed to map each cities development to the Innovation Process. The 3 Factors are:
Cultural Assets
Literally, this is the culture of a city, measured by arts communities, civic organizations, museums, music events, galleries, political protests, books, media, availability of information, and sports.
Human Infrastructure
This includes the soft and hard infrastructure of mass transit, finance, universities, hospitals, rail, roads, law, commerce, start-ups, healthcare, and telecommunications.
Networked Markets
This is a measure of a city’s power and linkages in global markets, taking into account geography, economics (such as exports and imports), technology, market size, geo-political factors, and diplomacy.
How Does the 3 Factors Work?
Overall Index Scores are currently out of 60 for each city (20 for each Factor Score).
Detailed data on this is available in various data products we offer.
Based on Models
The 3 Factors map to the Innovation Process by 2thinknow. The Innovation Process is how a successful idea turns to implementation and then communication, in a series of iterative cycles. This is modelled in the 2thinknow Innovation Development LifeCycle Model - which is a historically backward and forward-compatible model of innovation.
This whole concept is covered in the Innovation Cities™ Framework model.
Training courses are available to apply the Framework to create your city's innovation strategy.
For Comparison years - 2007 to 2011 the analysts released score out of 10 for each Factor Score, summing to a Index Score score out of 30 for each city. The model was significantly different in these years.
The basis of each Factor Score is a cumulative weighted and adjusted score of the 162 indicators. By viewing the Indicators you can see which belong in which Factor (can also change over time as innovation parameters evolve and society is impacted by technologies in different ways - e.g. GPS omnipresence removed the need for Street Signage in many cities).