From the possible to the practical

What is commercial, practical and works as ideas now and in the near future is built on the research and discovery of the near past. That means innovation and idea data across boundaries of basic and applied research are fundamental requirements for innovation decision making, whether academic or commercial.

It means those whose eyes stay fixed on the future horizon of the possible must consider both the scientifically possible and invented solution. Their expanded view means they more often transform ideas to knowledge and on to solution. Doing so changes the horizons they can see. It changes the horizons they can imagine. It changes the nature of our world and the solutions within it.

Where the threads go next are laid out at the edge of the great tapestry.

At the edge of what is possible.

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Top 100 Global Innovators past reports

Twelve years of measuring innovation excellence

Since 2011, we’ve explored the global innovation landscape. As global ideation pattern changes and the way they are measured evolves, so too has our methodology. Refreshed in 2022, our new model of innovation measurement focuses on consistent above-the-bar excellence where all ideas compete equally.

In this section, we offer the past five years of reports (since the inception of Clarivate™) as a complimentary resource for your reference.

Lighting a path to the possible

The creation of new knowledge can feel like a complex river. Filled with switchbacks, pools, eddies and rapids, science and engineering development finds a path from the discoveries of the enlightenment to the horizon of what may be possible.

Today, that flow of innovation is fed by vast numbers of tributaries, contributing ideas from many distinct pockets of research discipline.

At Clarivate, we have the privilege of witnessing that great pathway, visualizing it and helping to open it for the decision makers and innovators that lean on ideation data.

In that great river system, ideas transform and change, they morph from discovery to understanding of effects and outcome. They leave enticing opportunity, opening new directions for innovation itself.

Bringing together the information Clarivate has on both the inventive activity of humanity alongside the scientific discovery information of the world means we can track how technology, and the knowledge created with it, transfers. We can track how it graduates from what may be possible on to practical engineered solutions companies can build and supply.

Before the work and the ideas of Top 100 Global Innovators™ sits the research that carved a path to the possible – research referenced in the inventions of the Top 100 itself.

Here, we look before the Top 100 to the more fundamental science and engineering that – at least in part – enabled their work. We identify the 50 research organizations whose work is most often cited by the Top 100 Global Innovators 2023. Those institutions whose intellect underpins the design of engineered solutions.

Crossing boundaries

Interwoven in this analysis is the dissemination of research and innovation globally. Ideas do not see international borders. We can track the headquarters location of the Top 1,000 Global Innovators and the country/region location of the organization of the authors of the papers they cite. We can track when ideas cross those borders.

Doing so shows us how research ideas spread from region to region and the strength of the links between research in one region to the development of inventions in another.

This analysis primarily demonstrates the deep research links between Europe and the United States, with 5% of European inventions citing U.S. research papers and almost 11% of U.S. inventions citing European research.

The cross-border nature of research and developed idea flow has a good example in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with 95% of the citations to the institutions that make up the academy coming from organizations not based in Mainland China.

Indeed, within this data, U.S. organizations that are members of the Top 1,000 Global Innovators cite Mainland Chinese research (2.7% of inventions) more often than the other way round (1% of inventions) – underscoring the emergence of Mainland China today as new and net source of ideas and innovation.