Why refresh the Top 100 Global Innovators?
Since 2012, Clarivate has produced the annual Top 100 Global Innovator list. Using methodologies tied to the performance and impact of patented inventions, Top 100 Global Innovators identifies those organisations—research institutions and corporations—that are contributing more ideas and innovation than any others.
Produced using a large team across Clarivate—from our data and content teams to our analytics research functions and more—Top 100 Global Innovators spotlights the power of patent data to inform and celebrates science and engineering excellence.
For the first ten years of the programme we kept our calculation method consistent, but this year, we changed the mathematics. Instead of a top-down view of performance via ratios, we have moved to a bottom-up view of individual inventions right across Clarivate global invention data (The Derwent World Patents Index from Clarivate, which includes some 51 million patented ideas), compared in a technology, geography and time-normalised manner.
A changing ideation ecosystem
This shift came from two underlying drivers: first, the volume of global inventions today is much higher than when the list began 11 years ago—demanding more fidelity and a more consistent baseline of comparison, thanks to the historic volume of data currently being generated.
Second, Top 100 Global Innovators is directly informed by our work with Clarivate customers and the questions they have. Seeking answers, our team evolve the measurement methods we use, moving our analytical frameworks from the purely descriptive and into the prescriptive.
The paradox of patent data is that it is more complex and more diverse than ever before, reflecting the complexity occurring in our economy, while simultaneously offering more opportunities to use it to guide technology development.
For 2022, the time was right to re-platform the process onto the way we measure innovation today.
Convergence as a theme
I have talked often about the storm of convergence that buffets innovators in the 2020s. I structure that based on five mega themes:
