NEW YORK – Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University top the inaugural Reuters Top 100 ranking of the world’s most innovative universities. The Reuters Top 100 ranking aims to identify which institutions contribute the most to science and technology, and have the greatest impact on the global economy. The ranking uses proprietary data and analysis tools from the Intellectual Property & Science division of Thomson Reuters to examine a series of patent and research-related metrics, and get to the essence of what it means to be truly innovative.

How can potential partners, investors, faculty and students know if an institution is really transforming science and technology and affecting the global economy? To answer that question, Reuters set out to find and rank the world’s top 100 innovative universities, building a methodology that employs 10 different metrics. The criteria focused on academic papers, which indicate basic research performed at a university; and patent filings, which point to an institution’s interest in protecting and commercializing its discoveries.

Stanford edged out other tech giants and Ivy League stalwarts by scoring consistently well across each of our criteria with especially high marks when it came to articles and patents that were frequently cited by researchers elsewhere in the academic and corporate worlds.

Other key findings of the Reuters Top 100 include the strong performance of institutions outside the United States. Half of Reuters Top 100 Innovative Universities are located in Canada, Europe or Asia; Japan is home to nine of the Reuters Top 100 innovative universities – more than other country except the U.S. South Korea also performs well on the list: the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology, or KAIST, is the only non-U.S. school to place in the top ten.

The most innovative university in Europe, Imperial College London, ranked No. 11 overall. Founded in 1907, it's relatively young compared to the continent's second and third-place universities, Belgium's KU Leuven (No. 16, founded in 1425) and England's University of Cambridge (No. 25, established in 1209). Elsewhere in Europe, Switzerland stands out: With three schools on the list and a population of just over 8 million people, it has more top 100 innovative universities per capita than any other country in the world.

The Reuters Top 100: The World’s Most Innovative Universities

1          Stanford University

2          Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

3          Harvard University

4          University of Washington

5          University of Michigan System

6          Northwestern University

7          University of Texas System

8          University of Wisconsin System

9          University of Pennsylvania

10         Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST)

11         Imperial College London

12         Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH)

13         University of California System

14         University of Southern California

15         University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

16         KU Leuven

17         Duke University

18         Osaka University

19         Johns Hopkins University

20         California Institute of Technology

21         University of Illinois System

22         Kyoto University

23         Georgia Institute of Technology

24         University of Tokyo

25         University of Cambridge

26         Princeton University

27         Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

28         University of Colorado System

29         Ohio State University

30         University of Pittsburgh

31         Seoul National University

32         Purdue University System

33         Cornell University

34         Tufts University

34         Vanderbilt University

36         Yonsei University

37         Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich

38         University of Toronto

39         Tohoku University

40         University of Oxford

41         University of Utah

42         University of Minnesota System

43         Technical University of Denmark

44         Yale University

45         Columbia University

46         Oregon Health & Science University

47         Baylor College of Medicine

48         Emory University

49         Indiana University System

50         Technical University of Munich

51         Tokyo Institute of Technology

52         University of Erlangen Nuremberg

53         University of Zurich

54         University System of Maryland

55         University of Arizona

56         Carnegie Mellon University

57         University of Massachusetts System

58         Keio University

59         Boston University

60         University of Rochester

61         University of Munich

62         Hanyang University

63         Florida State University System

64         Pierre & Marie Curie University - Paris 6

65         Ghent University

66         Sungkyunkwan University

67         University of British Columbia

68         North Carolina State University

69         University of London

70         Penn State University

71         University of Chicago

72         Tsinghua University

73         Delft University of Technology

74         University of Virginia

75         Tel Aviv University

76         Technion Israel Institute of Technology

77         University of Freiburg

78         Wake Forest University

79         University of Paris Sud - Paris XI

80         University of Paris Descartes - Paris V

81         Kyushu University

82         Case Western Reserve University

83         University of Alabama System

84         Joseph Fourier University

84         Korea University

86         Arizona State University

86         Gwangju Institute of Science & Technology

88         University of Strasbourg

89         Nagoya University

90         University of Claude Bernard - Lyon 1

91         Rutgers State University

92         Erasmus University Rotterdam

93         State University of New York (SUNY) System

94         National University of Singapore

95         University of Manchester

96         Free University of Berlin

97         University of Aix-Marseille

98         Hokkaido University

99         University of Montpellier

100       Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

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