Many Asian cities are known for their advances in technology, culture, and society, but which cities are the most innovative?
Solidiance, a marketing strategy and consulting firm in Asia, compiled a list of the 16 Most Innovative Cities in Asia Pacific.
To create this list, they looked at six categories: human talent, knowledge creation, technology, society, government, and global integration. They gave each city a score for each category and tallied up the scores to create the final ranking.
Damien Duhamel, the main author of the research and a Managing Partner at Solidiance, provided us with exclusive commentary on each city. Duhamel's commentary is quoted in each slide.
#16 New Delhi
Overall Ranking: 0.18
India's capital city scored higher in the society category with a score of 0.046, but remained at the bottom of the list in the other five categories.
"New Delhi has gone many dramatic changes through different regimes, yet its recent crime case of gang rape still leaves a trace on top of our mind when talking about the city. Of course it takes more than low crime rate to catalyze innovation in the city, but there is actually a ripple effect that could be caused later on. The city also has a really low level of global integration and orientation towards future, so there is no other choice for New Delhi to really start transforming itself to be a city that is inclusive — not exclusive," Duhamel said.
#15 Mumbai
Overall Ranking: 0.20
Mumbai ranked in the middle of the society category, but scored low in the remaining five categories, earning it last place in this ranking.
"Mumbai is ranked poorly in our report, although many may argue that Indian people are regularly contributing to many innovation products worldwide. What happens is they opt to leave the city to thrive elsewhere, because the city doesn't have what it needs to make them stay, in terms of business and life amenities such as security and stability. The entrepreneurial seeds aren't planted well due to underdeveloped institutional framework, which blocks new and original ideas to propagate in the city," Duhamel said.
#14 Shanghai
Overall Ranking: 0.22
Shanghai scored in the middle of the global integration and knowledge creation categories, but scored poorly in the other four categories.
"Shanghai is living proof that human talent quantity doesn't always guarantee high innovation production. Shanghai's amazing city infrastructure, life facilities and industrial R&D centers are apparent, but its lack of creativity to generate original notions hinders it from being innovative. Shanghai is doing good in adopting other cities' prominence but innovation isn't done through copy-paste method — it involves acceptance towards various ideas and better educational system provided by the supportive government," Duhamel said.
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