Adding to its long list of economic and business environment bona fides, Utah has also earned the top ranking in a national assessment of overall innovation capacity and output from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business in partnership with the U.S. Economic Development Administration.
Utah claimed the top spot in the Innovation Intelligence report’s headline index thanks to consistently high scores across the five core areas that make up the ranking. Utah ranked first in economic well-being; second in business profile and business dynamic; third in employment and productivity; and sixth in human capital and knowledge creation. The report data reflects Utah outperforming the national average in every core area.
A new report by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute in partnership with the Economic Development Corporation of Utah went even deeper into the mechanisms behind the Beehive State’s high performance when it comes to the innovation quotient, using data gleaned from the Innovation Intelligence analysis along with additional sources including interviews of Utah’s “innovation ecosystem leaders and pioneers.”
At a Monday press event in Salt Lake City, Nate Lloyd, director of economic research at the Gardner Institute and lead author of the “Utah Innovations Ecosystem” report, said the research team “cast a wide net” in their effort to quantify and identify the font of Utah’s innovation energies.
“We were trying to create a common lexicon, or set of definitions, that we could all as a community speak to when it comes to innovation and innovation ecosystems,” Lloyd said. “We also wanted to identify what innovation ecosystems are in Utah and then do an analysis on those, an evaluation, to identify potential gaps and strengths within those ecosystems.”
Besides Utah’s broad innovation ecosystem, the report identifies five industry-aligned innovation ecosystems exist in Utah at various levels of maturity. They include:
- Aeronautics, space exploration and defense.
- Energy production.
- Finance, fintech and headquarters.
- Health care and life sciences.
- Technology and information systems.
The report highlighted Utah’s potential strengths common across its innovation industry ecosystems including human capital development (especially through higher education institutions); social “infrastructure” such as social capital and networks, industry associations, and collaborative ecosystem actors; and Utah’s culture of innovation and entrepreneurial mindset.
Researchers also uncovered the potential gaps in the innovation arena which include a lack of physical infrastructure (incubation space/labs, mature innovation hubs/districts, research facilities, etc.) and a lack of venture and other investment capital. In particular, according to the report, some of Utah’s innovation ecosystems are facing challenges in attracting venture capital investment including aeronautics/space exploration/defense, energy production, and health care/life sciences.
Representatives of EDCU, the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, Utah System of Higher Education and World Trade Center Utah participated in Monday’s report release press event and praised the report as a guiding document for both public sector policy makers and private industry leaders.
Jefferson Moss, the GOP majority leader for the Utah House of Representatives and associate commissioner of innovation, commercialization and economic development for the Utah System of Higher Education said the Utah Innovation Ecosystems report provides critical insight for mapping out the future goals of the state’s colleges and universities.
“This information is going to be so critical for us on the practitioners’ side, on the entrepreneurial side but also (for) policymakers,” Moss said. “What this report really highlighted to me is bringing the next level of understanding about how do we better integrate what we’re doing in higher education ... what we’re doing on workforce, how government can help support that and ensure that industry is helping drive those decisions.”
