A Tiny Subset Of US Cities Create The Vast Majority Of Inventions

Natural resources are one way for countries to grow, but that's an extremely volatile thing to bet long-term economic growth on. Australia is a prime example, at least for the moment. Cost advantage doesn't last forever either, as China is discovering.

What lasts is the ability to create things: new inventions, new products, and new technologies. That's something the United States still leads in, despite recent difficulties.

A new report from The Brookings Institution finds that the vast majority of U.S. patents and inventors are concentrated in just a few places. It's pretty extraordinary. Twenty cities that host about a third of the country's population produce more than 60 percent of its patents. Inventors are heavily concentrated around top universities and research centers of companies like IBM.

Here's their chart breaking it down:

See which cities top the list »