Here’s how Utah earned its No. 1 ranking for innovation

December 19, 2024

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.

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