Authors
Mike Wardle, Professor Michael Mainelli
Published by
Long Finance & Distributed Futures (November 2024), 51 pages.
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The Smart Centres Index 11
The eleventh edition of the Smart Centres Index was published on 28 May 2025. SCI 11 rates the innovation and technology offerings of leading commercial centres, tracking their ability to create, develop, and deploy technology.
The SCI is a factor assessment index, combining a number of instrumental factors - data measures drawn from a range of data providers across the world - and assessments given by business and finance professionals of three dimensions related to innovation and technology in major commercial and financial centres:
- Innovation Support - the support provided by regulatory and other systems to innovation and technology in a centre.
- Creative Intensity - the intensity of technology and innovation services and opportunities in a centre.
- Delivery Capability - the quality of the technology and innovation work that is taking place in a centre.
131 commercial and financial centres were researched for SCI 10 of which 76 are included in the index. SCI 9 was compiled using 135 instrumental factors. These quantitative measures are provided by third parties including the World Bank, the OECD, and the United Nations.
The instrumental factors are combined with financial centre assessments provided by respondents to the SCI online questionnaire. SCI 11 uses 1,772assessments provided by 296 respondents.
SCI 11 Results
- San Francisco and Zurich took first and second places in the index, overtaking London.
- Five Western European centres feature in the top 10, alongside three US centres.
- Singapore and Tel Aviv also feature in the top 10.
- Eight centres rose 10 or more places in the ranking in SCI 11, while five centres fell 10 or more places.
- The average rating in SCI 11 rose by 0.63% following a fall of 1.07% in SCI 10. The biggest increase in average ratings of 2.49% was in Latin America & The Caribbean, while the average rating for Asia/Pacific fell 0.02%.
- Confidence appears not to be strongly affected by the impact of current geopolitical tensions, and trade disruption, and we will continue to track these effects.
- Assessments in the SCI survey appear to favour centres with strong people skills, including leading centres and Oxford and Cambridge, which form a ‘golden triangle’ with London in the UK.