The world's 100 most innovative universities

Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University have topped the fourth annual Reuters Top 100 ranking of the world’s most innovative universities, compiled in partnership with Clarivate Analytics.

The ranking is based on educational institutions doing the most to advance science, invent new technologies and power new markets and industries.

From Asia, the ranking features nine universities from Japan, eight from South Korea, five from China, and one from Singapore (National University of Singapore).

Full ranking of Reuters' 100 most innovative universities in the world:

1          Stanford University

2          Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

3          Harvard University

4          University of Pennsylvania

5          University of Washington

6          University of Texas System

7          KU Leuven

8          Imperial College London

9          University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

10         Vanderbilt University

11         KAIST

12         Ecole PolytechniqueFederale de Lausanne

13         Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH)

14         University of California System

15         University of Southern California

16         Cornell University

17         Duke University

18         University of Cambridge

19         Johns Hopkins University

20         University of Tokyo

21         California Institute of Technology

22         Osaka University

23         University of Michigan System

24         Northwestern University

25         University of Wisconsin System

26         Kyoto University

27         University of Minnesota System

28         University of Illinois System

29         Georgia Institute of Technology

30         University of Utah

31         University of Erlangen Nuremberg

32         Ohio State University

33         Columbia University

34         Seoul National University

35         University of Toronto

36         Tohoku University

37         University of Pittsburgh

38         Yale University

39         Sungkyunkwan University

40         University of Oxford

41         University of Colorado System

42         Tufts University

43         Baylor College of Medicine

44         Tsinghua University

45         Technical University of Munich

46         Kyushu University

47         University of Minnesota System

48         University College London

49         ETH Zurich

50         Purdue University System

51         University of Chicago

52         Oregon Health & Science University

53         University of Manchester

54         Indiana University System

55         University of Montpellier

56         University of Munich

57         Technical University of Denmark

58         Emory University

59         Peking University

60         Sorbonne University

61         University of British Columbia

62         Delft University of Technology

63         National University of Singapore

64         Princeton University

65         University of Zurich

66         Hanyang University

67         Case Western Reserve University

68         Yonsei University

69         Rutgers State University

70         Boston University

71         University of Massachusetts System

72         Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

73         Wake Forest University

74         Keio University

75         Korea University

76         University of Florida

77         Leiden University

78         University of Paris Descartes - Paris 5

79         Hebrew University of Jerusalem

80         University of Cincinnati

81         University of Freiburg

82         Ruprecht Karl University Heidelberg

83         State University of New York System

84         University of Claude Bernard - Lyon 1

85         University of Virginia

86         Dresden University of Technology

87         University of Iowa

88         Ghent University

89         Shanghai Jiao Tong University

90         Hokkaido University

91         Tel Aviv University

92         Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

93         Zhejiang University

94         Fudan University

95         University of Miami

96         Arizona State University

97         University of Paris Sud - Paris 11

98         Gwangju Institute of Science & Technology

99         Nagoya University

100       Free University of Berlin

Stanford's steady stream of patents and research which are frequently cited by other academics around the world are cited for its number one showing.

While American universities lead the Reuters’ ranking (with 46 universities in the top 100), Belgium’s KU Leuven, ranked #7, is the highest ranked university outside the US. Germany and Japan are tied for second best performing country, with nine universities each.

South Korea has eight universities on the list; China, France and the United Kingdom each have five; Switzerland has three; Belgium, Canada, Israel and the Netherlands have two, and Denmark and Singapore each have 1.

Considered on a regional basis, North America has 48 universities in the top 100, Europe has 27, Asia has 23, and the Middle East has two. There are no universities in the top 100 located in Africa, South America or Oceania.

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