The report goes into some depth of the top 20 places and then deep dives into others in America, Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific. In all 45 cities around the world are nurturing startup ecosystems that are worth reading up about.

The report is copyright to the Startup Genome but I am sure they will not object to me quoting them in their goals for this

“Every city has the right to participate in the global startup revolution and reap the benefits of job creation, innovation, and economic growth. As this report documents, however, too many places are currently excluded from this revolution”

The aim of the report is to provide data-driven insights for startup leaders, investors, and the other ecosystem stakeholders like city leaders to capture and access policies and practices so they can learn from this research on what does and does not work, to build these startup ecosystems.

This report is presenting an evidence-based policymaking engine to guide and accelerate theses startup ecosystem efforts. The authors JF Gauthier, Marc Penzel and Max Marmer are all founders of Startup Genome and have pulled together an impressive project team to provide this great, insightful report with a whole host of Ecosystem Partners around the globe- thanks from this reader.

This report captures 10,000 founders across more than 100 cities and 50 countries who contribute into the survey and specifically 300 organizations that support startups in these cities with 40 odd city members who contributed research funding, along with a growing list of partners, all with a vested interest to make this global ecosystem of startups thrive and prosper. These global partners include CrunchBase, Dealroom.co, Global Entrepreneurship Network, Orb Intelligence and Angle Resource Institute and a number of regional partners

The report establishes the criteria that drive the startup ecosystem in a ranking methodology of Performance (30%), Funding (25%), Market Reach (20%), Startup Experience (15%) and Talent (10%). They look at the ecosystem lifecycle model of 1) Activation, 2) Globalization, 3) Expansion and 4) Integration as a guiding model to determine the right actions and support at the right times for maximum impact and acceleration. This does begin to place an evaluation structure to compare and contrast.

The money and startup mecca called Silicon Valley

StartUp Genome has been building and improving this report journey since 2011 and progressively we all will get ‘weaned’ off the idea that successful startups can only happen in Silicon Valley as the must go and do pilgrimage all aspiring entrepreneurs and start-ups must visit. Silicon Valley happened due to a steady stream of investments since the end of the 2nd world war.

Today it is reportedly full of “unregulated free enterprises” but it has been progressively shaped through proactive policy and concerted private programs and massive infusions of venture capital funding and a highly entrepreneurial spirit of experiment and drive and it is all these lessons that require a deeper evaluation to measure success. Often others seem to want to just lift up (selected) parts instead of completing a more rigorous assessment of what works today, why, the circumstances (and serendipity involved),   what happened over time to get to this point but the lessons, once learnt can be applied everywhere, if this assessment is a good one.

Some of the really important takeaways for me:

• Early-stage startups are highly dependent on their surroundings
• Original ideas emerge from unexpected places in unanticipated ways
• There is a clear lifecycle to the development of startup ecosystems
• There needs to be a shared sense of urgency about developing vibrant startup ecosystems
• New and young businesses grow economies
• Entrepreneurial ecosystems are multi-dimensional in their performance in driving startup success, we should know what these are.
• The world gravitates to the ecosystem that has the best change (conditions) of global success
• Technology today is creating winners and losers and that gap is widening at a rapid pace
• Startups are a key vehicle by which a region and their citizens can take advantage of technological change
• The places that fail to boldly and immediately invest in startup ecosystems and thus fail to produce startups will experience economic stagnation over time
• The tech sector is growing at twice as fast as the global economy
• The trend of the old-line industrial corporations like Boeing, Ford, GE, John Deere, Schindler Lifts, Bosch are all turning large parts of their business int software-as-a-service (SaaS) the world of technology and software is dominating.
• The concentration of startup ecosystems is highly concentrated with 11 of the 55 ecosystems studied actually account for 78% of global Ecosystem Value with these 11 ecosystems found in seven countries.
• It is suggested it is taking 20 years for a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem to develop in a city or region
• In the next 15 years, global economic value from technological change will double so who will miss out are those that do not aggressively invest in startup ecosystems

The whole vibrancy surrounding startup ecosystems transfers itself in so many more economic ways for a region or city. It builds partnerships with larger, more established organizations within the region and allows for increasing exchange, it can infuse and inspire local universities with providing better choices for careers, learning new skills and forming partnerships that both can benefit from, defraying costs of being “stand alone”.

With a world becoming more mobile, ideas flow across boundaries, people are far more mobile than ever before and capital is attracted to ideas and people to help build these entrepreneurial ecosystems. Entrepreneurs should not be geographically constrained with vibrant ecosystems building in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and in the Americas.

The recognition that the industrial era is rapidly being replaced by the information era adds to this sense of a need to establish vibrant startup ecosystems for capturing the value creation.

I like where JF Gauthier, Founder, and CEO of Startup Genome talks fo the culture that builds from these startup ecosystems, he calls it “the revolution offered in the generosity and pay-it-forward mentality found in the startup culture”.

A growing problem for Switzerland

One note of concern for me there is no mention of Startup Ecosystems found in Switzerland. For a country claimed to be the leading innovation country, this is a glaring problem or has it some but not at any critical mass or just simply fragmented across the country.

This lack of recognition of the vibrancy that comes from a startup cluster must be a constraint. I come back to one observation “the places that fail to boldly and immediately invest in startup ecosystems and thus fail to produce startups will experience economic stagnation over time“.

Switzerland has been known for its poor support for startups and this seems to be borne out by a lack of a mention in this report. Something is wrong? Reliance on large corporation’s R&D being based here and filing patents is an older model that Switzerland needs to address, before it is facing a sudden crisis.

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The post The Global StartUp Ecosystem first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Well one I recently finished has been one of those rare books that got the Paul Hobcraft treatment; considerable underlining, scribbles in the margins, circles around some pages that I want to refer back too as quickly as I can. You can never achieve that same sense of ‘ownership’ and possession through the e-reader can you, or am I missing something there?

So the book that joined that elite pantheon to the innovation gods on my top shelf was one written by Yves Doz and Keeley Wilson entitled “Managing Global Innovation – frameworks for integrating capabilities around the World”, printed by Harvard Business Review Press. I really recommend it.

The Key to bridging your Global Innovation Gap

The book is all about providing the understanding of integrating your global resources to build and leverage a global innovation network. I think it does a good job in explaining the different parts, the considerations and the tougher aspects of making this work for you.

Ok, I’m a sucker when it starts off by discussing the innovation challenges, then starts climbing into chapters on optimizing the innovation footprint, then communications, receptivity and then how to organize for global projects focusing on collaborative and integrated innovation, it does draw you in.

I’ll leave you to explore this in your own time, if global innovation and integrating is your bag. Equally I think it will be more than helpful in thinking this fully through or recognizing gaps within your present operations.

What the book does for me

Why it is one of those books for me is where it keeps coming back and placing the focus, on knowledge attainment, seeking out receptivity, transferring and integrating complex and codified knowledge. This emphasis fits so much with my own passion and constantly pushing “Absorptive Capacity” that it felt like coming home, that reaffirming feeling. The difference was the book took you through a different level of journey and understanding to add a whole lot more in my own thinking around this area.

Collaborative diffusion, building distributed innovation ecosystems, compatible strategic ambitions, cultural compatibility and discussing the interdependencies all challenge your thinking. As the authors nicely sum up in Chapter 7 it is how the behaviour of decision makers needs to move from that in-built notion of “being successful by competing” on their individual level and changing their mindset for more collaborative innovation across this diverse and global network.

The authors suggest this new way of managing is a difficult one to adopt and sustain but suggest the best way, perhaps the only way, is through constant practice and having a positive reinforcement of what makes for successful collaborations. I’d also add that ability to experiment, to learn from others around you constantly and recognizing ‘winning and being successful’ is not reliant on just yourself, it is leveraging everything that is all around you that builds your experience and knowledge.

Globally Integrated Innovation

We live in a world of huge diversity and dispersion of knowledge. There is a growth and constant push into new markets, emerging new competitors that are increasingly challenging us to find solutions to this management of global networks, both inside and outside our organizations in more integrative approaches to capture the ‘best’ of innovation.

Today’s present structures of the innovation organization, the systems required, the processes, the diversity of cultures, different mindsets and the focus on extracting the best from this mix of structure and resources is hard and complex.

The authors argue the scope and scale of the tasks should not become an impediment to action and suggest three dimensions of change to help in this. I’ll leave you to search for these.

They warn there is one huge caveat to achievement.

Senior management’s vision, their commitment and attention to this will not achieve this globally integrated network alone.  It is the recognition that failure to implement strategic change is often this lack of buy-in from groups of middle managers who remain happy with the status-quo or unaware of the need and rationale for the required change.

These gaps within organizations are due to the lack of dialogue, openly discussing threats and challenges and being inclusive in the implementation. This took me back, again, to my own arguments and suggested solutions to bridge that gap, through the Executive Innovation Work Mat.

“Knowledge is increasingly dispersed”

We return to knowledge in the wrap up within the book, where the authors have identified five radical shifts taking place that will lead to greater knowledge diffusion and diversity: 1) globalization and the opening of new markets; 2) increasing technological complexity and convergence; 3) demographic changes; 4) greater external pressures, in particular environmental concerns (and scarcity); 5) offshore outposts and outsourcing.

Knowing what makes up the complexities of global innovation and managing and harnessing this in dispersed networks is a real challenge and there is no better place to start than in picking up a copy of this book and working through it thoughtfully and thoroughly, to “organize, build and manage a global innovation capability from design to execution”

My final thought – beyond the previous boundaries of innovation

With innovation increasingly moving beyond its previous boundaries of simply leaving it to the scientists or marketing departments has long gone, for today and in the future, innovation is about open, inclusive, exploration and harmonization to extract the best.

Innovation has moved beyond products into new services, changing value propositions and business models and needs this constant reorganization around changing the innovation activities. Technology- based alone is not enough pursuing greater functionality; we are increasingly in the disruptive era of simplification, which captures far more of the imagination and where the increased movement of wealth generating opportunities lie.

Look at the effects of reverse innovation, jugaad or frugal innovation and where this has potential, the strong underlying movement in start-ups that are far more ‘needs related’ or serving ‘unmet needs’ through lean approaches than those in the past, of simply cruising along for opportunity with a vague business concept.

Everything has become so much sharper in why we have to focus our minds down, it is far more on what and where innovation can give us the next growth opportunity and that comes from all the diversity we can muster. Managing in the global innovation space is no different, it needs a dedicated focus and understanding, to find the unique mix that suits your needs and knowledge accessing and translating becomes the global unlocking key.

The post Moving Towards Globally Integrated Innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.