Cure
Overview
The powerhouses lead, but the Index reveals translational strength in unexpected places.
When 303 of the country's top biomedical research institutions are mapped by state, the geography of American innovation comes into focus, and it does not look quite the way conventional wisdom suggests.
The expected leaders are there. California, New York, Texas, and Massachusetts account for more than a third of all ranked institutions between them. But the Index also reveals a second pattern: states with far fewer institutions placing a disproportionate share of them near the top of the national rankings, often because a single anchor institution is strong enough to shape the research and commercialization environment around it.
Massachusetts has long been considered the center of American biomedical research, and the Innovation Index data confirms it. The state is home to the top-ranked university and the top-ranked institute on the Index: Harvard and Mass General Brigham. It places eight institutions in the national top 25, second only to California's 11. California's strength runs unusually deep on the institute side, with seven of its 11 ranked institutes in the top 25. New York has 20 ranked universities, with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Cornell, and Columbia all in the top 20, and Memorial Sloan Kettering leading its institute list. Texas fields the most ranked universities of any state at 23, reflecting the reach of the UT and Texas A&M systems across multiple cities.
Ohio's place on the list at No. 5 is driven in large part by its institutes. Cleveland Clinic, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and Nationwide Children's Hospital all rank in the top 20 nationally, giving Ohio the strongest institute cluster of any state on the Index. Pennsylvania's case is similar, with the University of Pennsylvania in the top five and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the Wistar Institute both among the top 15 institutes.
Washington rounds out the top 10 on a tiebreaker. Five states tied at seven total institutions, but Washington placed six of its seven in the national top 50, more than Georgia, New Jersey, Tennessee, or Louisiana. The state's profile is unusual: five of its seven ranked institutions are institutes and centers rather than universities, the inverse of almost every other state. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle Children's Hospital, the Institute for Systems Biology, the Allen Institute, and Virginia Mason Medical Center form a cluster around the University of Washington, Seattle, that gives the state far more top-50 density than its headcount suggests.
The Anchor Effect
That pattern, a small number of institutions punching well above a state's overall volume, shows up repeatedly outside the top 10. The Index measures entrepreneurial ecosystem support and industry reputation as scored subdomains, and when an anchor institution rates highly on both, it tends to pull talent, funding, and partnerships toward the surrounding research environment.
Minnesota has only three ranked institutions, but one of them is Mayo Clinic, second among all institutes and top-rated in entrepreneurial readiness. Mayo scores "Excellent" on both ecosystem support and industry reputation. Maryland has five institutions led by Johns Hopkins at No. 6 overall, with "Excellent" ratings in the same categories. North Carolina places Duke and UNC Chapel Hill in the top 20, both scoring "Excellent" across ecosystem support, industry connections, and industry reputation. Connecticut has just two ranked institutions, but one is Yale at No. 10, ranking in the top 12 across all three of the Index's domains.
These states do not need to match Massachusetts or California in volume. What the data shows is that a single institution operating at a high level of translational performance can place an entire state among the strongest in the country, through the quality and reach of its commercialization work rather than the size of its research footprint.
The Top 10 States by Ranked Institutions
Use the interactive map for a full list of institutions by state.
California, 29 (18 Universities, 11 Institutes and Centers)
New York, 27 (20, 7)
Texas, 25 (23, 2)
Massachusetts, 20 (11, 9)
Ohio, 14 (11, 3)
Pennsylvania, 13 (8, 5)
Illinois, 11 (10, 1)
Florida, 10 (9, 1)
Michigan, 9 (7, 2)
Washington, 7 (2, 5)
