Some regions have more temperate climates than others, making them pleasant places to live.  The same holds true for business innovation.

24/7 Wall St. wanted to identify the regions within Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development countries–the world’s 34 most developed nations — which are in the forefront of developing new products and services.  The OECD has a great deal of data to help deter
mine these rankings. The most valuable comes from the “Regions and Innovation Policy” study done in 2011. Information from the study’s “Business Enterprise Research and Development (BERD) expenditure as a percent of GDP” database allows us to identify the most innovation-rich regions in each nation.

So, 24/7 Wall St. compared the BERD expenditures as a percent of GDP in the innovation-rich regions to that of the entire country where those regions are located. The “lift” between the country and region is one of the most relevant comparisons. Sweden’s R&D as a percent of GDP is 2.7%.  In the South Sweden region, that figure is 3.9%. In the UK, the R&D ratio to GDP is 1.2%. The research rich Eastern Region’s ratio is 3.6%.. The distribution of R&D expenditures is much more evenly based in Sweden and nationally it is higher than in the UK

• Read The Most Innovative Places In The World

The 24/7 Wall St. survey of the “Most Innovative Places In The World” is ranked based on the highest R&D -to-GDP ratios among all states/provinces in the OECD nations. No nation can have more than one region on this list.

There are two lessons from this exercise. The first is that some regions are fortunate.  Massachusetts has been home to large international universities for centuries. This probably caused companies that needed highly trained researchers to locate there as well. The second is that some regions are built to be R&D rich by their national governments. The Czech Republic offers incentives to companies to work within a predetermined region to develop R&D.. There is really no way to tell whether the free market selection of R&D location of Massachusetts is better or worse than the government-directed system of the Czechs.

These are the 24/7 Wall St. “Most Innovative Places In The World.”