Key highlights:

• Atlanta boasts the 5^th-highest position within the southern innovation hub ranking based on the number of patents (25,246) granted between 2020 and 2024.

• With 37.4% of its college-educated population having arrived here in the past years, Atlanta stands out as one of the Southern cities that experienced strong inflows of educated talent – earning the city the 6^th-best score among the top 20 in this category.

• Atlanta recorded roughly 1.1 million square feet of R&D and life science office space, both completed and under construction. The city ranks 7th among all southern entries we analyzed for this metric. 

• Looking at the overall ranking, Atlanta managed to secure the 12^th spot among the top 20 southern innovation hubs, earning a total of 90.52 points. 

The term “talent density” was initially coined by Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, to describe businesses that enjoyed a lot of success as a result of the high quality of their workforce and the implementation of a high-performance culture. In other words, when provided with the right environment, performance is contagious.

Now, let’s consider the same principle applied to an entire city: When an area displays a significant concentration of skilled professionals — particularly in fields like technology, science and engineering — along with the infrastructure to develop and employ top talent, it creates a powerful engine for economic growth and innovation on a much larger scale.

Bearing this in mind, we compiled a list of the 20 most talent-dense innovation hubs across the South as the first iteration in a series that will look at cities across the entirety of the U.S. To that end, we employed 15 separate indicators, broadly grouped into three categories — employment, business environment and education.

For the full study: https://www.commercialcafe.com