Madison ranked 7th Most Innovative City by Forbes

MADISON – Madison received national praise this week when it was ranked 7th on Forbes Magazine’s list of the 100 most innovative cities in the country.

The rankings were based on the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S. and used data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to determine number of patents per capita. Then Forbes combined it with venture capital investment per capita from the National Venture Capital Association, along with those cities' ratios of high-tech, science and "creative" jobs from ZoomProspector.com and Payscale.com.

Al Lee, director of quantitative analysis at jobs site Payscale.com, points to big tech firms' support from local universities to explain most of the cities on our list. The fact that Madison ranks seventh is due in part to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Madison’s overall ranking was also driven in part by the technology and science jobs category, in which the city was ranked 3rd nationwide.

Madison ranked 9th for patents per capita with only 7 patents issued for every 10,000 people per ZoomProspector.com. Madison also has 27% of its workforce in the creative professions. Creative jobs are defined as those who create for a living: scientists, engineers, architects, educators, writers, artists and entertainers.

Forbes Magazine also recently singled out the University Research Park & MGE Innovation Center at the University of Wisconsin—Madison as one of the top 10 technology innovation and development parks.