Methodology
To identify the most and least innovative states, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed a weighted index of 22 measures, indicative of innovative capacity, created by personal finance website, WalletHub, which published a report, Most & Least Innovative States. A full description of each measure and its weighting is available here.
We also considered a number of supplementary measures. Employment in STEM fields, both overall and as a percentage of overall employment as well as the average annual wage in STEM fields are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and are current as of May 2021, the most recent period of available data.
We also considered total venture capital investment and the total number of venture capital deals by state in 2021 from the National Venture Capital Association.
Data on total patent issues in 2020 is from the U.S. Patent and Trade Office. Per capita patent figures were adjusted using one-year population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey.
