The role of universities in innovation is something that I’ve covered many times in the past, so it was interesting to read a recent paper from researchers at Northwestern University, which aimed to provide a precise figure for the impact they have on innovation in their local community.

The paper goes back in time and examines the nineteenth and mid-twentieth century, when a lot of new universities were established in the United States.  The documentation surrounding each creation of a university would ordinarily identify a ‘losing finalist’ location that was considered for the school but eventually lost out to the eventual location.  Most of these locations are very similar to the eventual locations, so comparison between their eventual innovative output was possible.

The researcher then examines the innovative output of each community in terms of the patents registered there (I know patents are a poor measure of innovation, but they’re the easiest).

Innovative output

The analysis found that the successful locations with a new college produced 32% more patents per year than the losing finalist locations.  When this figure was explored in more depth, it emerged that 10% of this number came from alumni of the college, with faculty account for less than 1%.

Far and away the most important channel however was through migration.  This accounted for up to 40% of the innovation boost colleges provide to an area.

“The presence of geographic spillovers suggests that colleges do cause an overall net increase in patenting, although I find no evidence that colleges are better at promoting invention than other policies that lead to similar increases in population,” the author says.

Which does kinda suggest that the free movement of people is fundamental to the success of innovation.  It’s a point I made in a recent Forbes piece that highlighted the crucial importance a steady flow of people and ideas was to the success of research and innovation at universities.  Universities are undoubtedly a honey pot for talented people however, so their impact on innovation is clear.

Working with universities

So how do you begin working with a university on your own innovation project? A good place to start might be the recently published Reuters Top 100: Europe’s Most Innovative Universities, which aimed to highlight the most innovative universities in Europe.

The league table has been put together by the IP & Science division of Thomson Reuters so it has an inevitable focus on things such as the number of patents produced by a university alongside nine other metrics, including the number of academic papers published.

Interestingly, the league table suggests that the most innovative university in Europe is Belgium’s KU Leuven. Whilst this may appear surprising, they do in fact have one of the largest independent R&D organizations in the world, and this helped them churn out a huge number of influential inventions. Indeed, KU Leuven research is often cited in external patent applications.