From CityLab, from the Atlantic
San Francisco’s Increasing Dominance Over U.S. Innovation:
A new study charts the incredible growth of innovation in the Bay Area
By Richard Florida
There is great concern that innovation in the United States is waning, and that the country has entered into a period of prolonged secular stagnation. While innovation across America has increased at a relatively slow pace since the mid-1970s, it has seen spectacular growth in the San Francisco Bay Area.
That’s the big takeaway from a new study, which looks at the changing geography of innovation across the U.S. over the past four decades. The study—by my University of Toronto colleague Avi Goldfarb, along with Chris Forman of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Shane Greenstein of Harvard University—takes a detailed look at trends in patents (the most commonly used measure of innovation) across U.S. metros between 1976 and 2008....
This is in line with research from Berkeley professor AnnaLee Saxenian, which has found that the Bay Area, unlike other U.S. or global metros, has been able to consistently redefine and remake itself by innovating in new, cutting-edge industries. In fact, the region has given rise to leading companies in sectors from semiconductors (Intel), personal computers and mobile phones (Apple), biotechnology (Genentech), search engines (Google), social media (Twitter), and ride hailing (Uber).