This weekend, theaters will rumble with the sounds of more monsters and machines battling it out over the fate of the world as we know it. The themes of Warner Bros.’ Pacific Rimmight not be new but I’m here to say you should still get out to the theater and see the movie.
I haven’t seen Pacific Rim myself. I don’t know if it’s any good (although it earns a 72 out of 100 on Rotten Tomatoes). As a fan of director Guillermo Del Toro, I’m very excited to see his take on the whole Godzilla vs. mecha thing.
But that’s not why I’m advocating for the movie here. If you have any interest in the film, you should make the effort to see it in the theater for one simple reason: although the movie is inspired by Japanese kaiju, it’s an original story.
That’s a huge risk in today’s market where the highest-grossing films are almost always either sequels or based on previous material like old TV shows or books. Take a look at the top-grossing movies from 2012. Only one live-action film of the top 20 is based on original material: Ted. With a budget of $50 million, the comedy was not that huge of a risk for Universal.
Pacific Rim, on the other hand, cost $180 million. From a profit and loss point of view, that’s more than any studio really should spend on an original idea. It doesn’t make a lot of sense if you just look at the numbers.
But that’s what’s so great about the movie. My hope is that if the film does well enough, studios will look at the numbers and be more willing to take similar risks in the future. Iron Man 3 and Fast & Furious 6are all well and good, but how amazing is it to find something unexpected and delightful at the theater? It’s hard for that to happen with sequels and reboots and book adaptations.
Exhibitor Relations expects Pacific Rim will rank second at the box office with $42 million (behind, natch, a sequel, Despicable Me 2). But Exhibitor’s Jeff Bock says the film could do even better as it can be hard to track how many younger people will show up opening weekend. The movie currently accounts for 60% of the ticket sales on Fandango. If it does earn $42 million, that’s not a great opening. It would only be the 10th biggest opening of the year.
So maybe, in a show of support for original ideas, we can bump that number up enough for the film to have an unexpectedly good showing. Just enough for the studio bean counters to say yes to the next crazy idea when it comes around.
(Oh, and also get out there and support indie movies. They need it even more.)
Follow me on Twitter at DorothyatForbes.
KARACHI: Embarrassed by the startling revelations made in the leaked version of the OBL Commission Report, military and civilian intelligence agencies have started investigating whether the document was passed on to a media organisation by one of the Commission members, or by those involved in preparing the draft.
The leaked version of report, uploaded by the Qatar-based media organisation Al-Jazeera, has blamed all government and military institutions of collective failure for their inability to track down Osama Bin Laden while he was living in the country, and for not being able to detect or prevent the unauthorised operation against the Al Qaeda chief by the US Navy SEAL’s deep inside the Pakistani territory.
Authorities investigating the matter believe the Prime Minister’s Office may not have been involved in the leak as the version uploaded on the news organisation’s website is without the signatures of the members, and also somewhat incomplete as, among other things, a dissenting note by one of the Commission members is missing.
According to a well-placed investigator in all probability it was the second draft written after the first failed to elicit a consensus among all the members possibly because it is said to have ‘named too many names’.
Although sources close to the five-member Commission, headed by retired Justice Javaid Iqbal, remained tight-lipped, possibly a bit shocked as well at the sudden revelations, the investigator assigned to look into the ‘leak’ told Dawn that the draft which appeared in the press was the second one.
But even that didn’t lead to a consensus as some of the members refused to sign up to it.
So a third version was written which was agreed by all commission members save for one.
While nobody else would confirm this, the investigator referred to a ‘dissenting note’ said to have been added to this ‘final version’ by an unnamed member.
The final version was then submitted to the Prime Minister’s Secretariat on January 4, 2013, according to reports in the media, but never saw the light of day till the completion of Raja Pervez Ashraf government’s tenure some 10 weeks later.
“With a couple of Islamabad journalists belonging to foreign media organisations suggesting that the ‘report’ was offered to them in exchange for money and other informed media persons linking the timing of the release to tensions between the military and the PML-N administration, we have to investigate all angles,” said the investigator.
He also said he’d be looking into how many copies were made of the draft, where it was saved and how many secretaries/stenos etc had access to it as also staff working for some of the commission members who may have got their hands on a copy purely by chance.
This investigation may or may not go anywhere particularly when whatever disagreement earlier existed on this draft seems to have evaporated when within hours of its leak the Commission chairman happily owned up to it.
However, the truth about what is actually there in the report, and the dissenting note, can be known once it is officially released or placed before the parliament.
British police said on Friday they were investigating reports of a “loud bang” outside a mosque in a town in central England which a local politician said was a “suspected bomb blast.” West Midlands police said they were alerted to the reports of the bang in Tipton near Birmingham shortly after 1 pm (1300 BST) No injuries were reported and it was not clear if there had been an explosion, a spokesman said.
“A cordon has been set up and the immediate area is being evacuated as a precautionary measure while police investigate what caused it,” police said in a statement. “Some residents have reported finding debris in the area and finding nails.
This is being investigated by forensic officers at the scene.” Richard Burden, a Birmingham MP, wrote on his Twitter website: “Shocked to hear of suspected bomb blast at Tipton mosque.” Community tensions have been tense since the murder of a British soldier in south London in May.
Two suspects, both British Muslims, face a murder trial in November. Since the killing, the English Defence League (EDL), a right-wing group which vociferously opposes Islamism, has taken to the streets at several protests where its supporters have chanted slogans such as “Muslim killers off our streets.
” A mosque was burned down in London after the killing but it was unclear who caused the fire, while politicians and religious leaders have appealed for calm. Birmingham is home to a large Muslim population and last month a number of men from the city were jailed for plotting to attack an EDL rally using a homemade nail bomb.
- See more at:
http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2013/07/12/news/foreign/blast-outside-uk-mosque-police-investigating/#sthash.pIjaJnXT.dpuf
CARACAS, Venezuela — The United States is conducting a diplomatic full-court press to try to block Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive American intelligence contractor, from finding refuge in Latin America, where three left-leaning governments that make defying Washington a hallmark of their foreign policies have publicly vowed to take him in.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. took the unusual step of telephoning President Rafael Correa of Ecuador to urge him not to give asylum to Mr. Snowden. Senior State Department officials have also pushed Venezuela, one of the three countries offering to shelter him, with both sides keenly aware that hopes for better ties and an exchange of ambassadors after years of tension could be on the line.
And all across the region, American embassies have communicated Washington’s message that letting Mr. Snowden into Latin America, even if he shows up unexpectedly, would have lasting consequences.
“There is not a country in the hemisphere whose government does not understand our position at this point,” a senior State Department official focusing on the matter said recently, adding that helping Mr. Snowden “would put relations in a very bad place for a long time to come.”
“If someone thinks things would go away, it won’t be the case,” the official said.
But Washington is finding that its leverage in Latin America is limited just when it needs it most, a reflection of how a region that was once a broad zone of American power has become increasingly confident in its ability to act independently.
“Our influence in the hemisphere is diminishing,” said Bill Richardson, a former American ambassador to the United Nations who visited Venezuela this year as a representative of the Organization of American States. “It’s important that the Obama administration and Secretary of State Kerry devote more time to the region and buttress our relationship with some of the moderate countries, like Mexico and Colombia and Brazil and Peru, to resist that anti-U.S. movement.”
At the same time, Mr. Richardson said, there should be efforts to build bridges to countries antagonistic to the United States.
The countries offering to take in Mr. Snowden — Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia — belong to a bloc of governments engaged in a constant war of words with the United States. Venezuela and Bolivia have expelled American ambassadors and other officials, and in a television interview this week Venezuela’s foreign minister openly shrugged off the American pressure campaign.
“The State Department and the government of the United States should know that Venezuela learned a long time ago and defeated pressures from any part of the world,” the minister, Elías Jaua, said.
The United States has continued to reach out to Venezuela. Roberta S. Jacobson, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, repeated the Obama administration’s position on Mr. Snowden this week in a phone call with the chargé d’áffaires of the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, a government official said.
In some cases, the diplomatic effort seems to have paid off. Ecuador at one point appeared eager to grant Mr. Snowden refuge, but it gradually seemed to back off, saying that it could not even consider his request for asylum unless he was in the country or in one of its embassies abroad.
The call from Mr. Biden brought an uncharacteristically warm response from Mr. Correa, who often rails against what he sees as excessive American influence in the region. In an interview, he praised Mr. Biden as being cordial, saying the vice president asked him not to grant asylum and explained that “it could greatly deteriorate relations, but without any kind of threat, just presenting the importance that the Snowden case has for them.”
By contrast, Mr. Correa bristled at what he viewed as threats by American senators who vowed to end trade preferences on some Ecuadorean goods if his country sheltered Mr. Snowden. One group of preferences expires at the end of the month unless renewed by Congress, but Ecuador has sought separate White House approval for duty-free treatment for roses, broccoli and artichokes. The White House said last week it was postponing a decision.
Mr. Snowden’s leaks sometimes appear timed to coincide with where he is at the moment or hopes to go. When he was hiding out in Hong Kong, he leaked documents about American spying in China.
Now it is Latin America’s turn. This week, a Brazilian newspaper, O Globo, has printed articles based on his leaks about how the United States has been collecting data on telephone calls and e-mail traffic in Brazil and other Latin American countries, pushing even close allies of the United States to lodge angry protests with Washington.
The intensity in the region has been fueled in part by the airborne misadventure last week of President Evo Morales of Bolivia, whose plane was turned back from French airspace and forced to make an emergency landing in Vienna after a meeting in Moscow, where Mr. Snowden has been holed up in an airport.
Bolivian authorities called the episode a hijacking, saying the reason was unfounded suspicions that Mr. Snowden was on board, and they accused the United States of being behind it. They also accused Spain, Portugal and Italy of refusing to allow Mr. Morales’s plane to fly over or land in their countries. Latin American leaders quickly rallied to his side, condemning the treatment as an affront to the entire region.
But for all the bluster, it is possible that no government in the region is really eager to see Mr. Snowden land in its country. None of the countries that have offered him asylum have said they would be willing to go fetch him — a potentially complicated undertaking, given what happened to Mr. Morales’s aircraft.
Mr. Richardson said that he was baffled by the stance of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro. He met with Mr. Maduro in April, just before he was elected, and said he was asked to tell Washington that Venezuela wanted to improve relations, which have been rocky for years.
Mr. Maduro then sent his foreign minister, Mr. Jaua, to shake hands with Secretary of State John Kerry, and they agreed to start talks that would eventually lead to a new exchange of ambassadors. But it seems clear that any hopes for better relations would be scuttled if Mr. Snowden were given safe haven.
“What I think is going on among Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua and possibly others is, who can replace Chávez as the main U.S. antagonist?” said Mr. Richardson, referring to Venezuela’s former president, Hugo Chávez, who died in March. “But the risk for them is a diminished relationship and possibly some retaliation with the U.S. They may feel the headlines they get from being anti-U.S. is worth it for them domestically.”
Ultimately, Nicaragua would be loath to anger the United States, its principal trading partner, especially as it awaits an annual State Department assessment that helps it get international loans and the expansion of a trade preference that allows some of its products to enter the United States duty-free, said Carlos F. Chamorro, a Nicaraguan analyst critical of the government. He argued that the asylum offer made by Nicaragua’s president, Daniel Ortega, amounted to grandstanding, hedged by a caveat that the offer stood “if the circumstances permit.”
“It’s consistent with Ortega’s policy to provoke up to a certain point the American administration while at the same time doing everything to maintain better relations,” Mr. Chamorro said.
Still, Washington’s push for extradition has poked at a sore spot for several countries that have sought the extradition of people wanted by their justice systems.
Mr. Correa has pointed to the case of two brothers, William and Roberto Isaias, who ran a bank at the center of a huge Ecuadorean financial scandal in the 1990s. They were convicted in absentia of financial wrongdoing in an Ecuadorean court. They now live in the United States, but repeated requests for extradition have been unsuccessful.
And Venezuela has demanded the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles, a former C.I.A. operative accused here of masterminding the bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people in the 1970s. He escaped from a Venezuelan prison in the 1980s and went to live in the United States.
“The first thing you need to do to have the moral standing to ask for the extradition of this youth Snowden, whose only act is to reveal the crimes that you committed, is to turn over Luis Posada Carriles, who you are protecting,” Mr. Maduro said this month.
In the criminally underrated Schwarzenegger film Last Action Hero, there’s a scene where the villain (played brilliantly by Charles Dance, a.k.a. Tywin Lannister) from a cheesy action movie enters the “real” world. After witnessing a mugging for which there was no consequence, he proceeds to shoot someone in cold blood and laughs as he hears nothing: no sirens, no police telling him to drop his gun. Nothing. That’s when he embarks on his plan to run loose in a world where “the bad guys can win.”
Ironically, in many cities around the country in the actual real world, this scene would play out quite differently. In Milwaukee, for example, if you fire a gun in some neighborhoods you might find yourself surrounded by police in just a few minutes.
That’s thanks to a technology deployed in Milwaukee and 74 other cities both in the United States and other countries created by ShotSpotter. The company, which was founded in 1995, uses an array of acoustic sensors deployed in a neighborhood that listen for one thing: the sound of gunfire. The sensors are paired with software that can analyze the sounds in real time, triangulating and pinpointing the location of each round fired down to the latitude and longitude. The software also filters out non-gunfire sounds that might have triggered the sensors, and the sound is also sent to trained officers who act to confirm that it’s gunfire before an alert is sent to officers on patrol.
In the first quarter of 2013, the company told me, their system detected 7,584 separate gunfire incidents in 30 cities they pulled data from. In those incidents, 26,617 rounds were fired – about 3.5 rounds per incident. One of those incidents saw 63 rounds fired. 63% of gunfire, they found, takes place between 8pm and 4am (local time) with 54% of that gunfire happening on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
That’s data that law enforcement finds useful – especially for predictive policing. In the City of Milwaukee, police use the system as part of a bigger strategy for fighting crime.
“We weren’t interested in technology for technology’s sake,” Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn told me. “We wanted to ensure that it assisted us in accomplishing our mission. Which is to help people live in a safe neighborhood so they can raise their children and pursue the American dream.”
“Our strategy,” he continued. “is community based and problem oriented. We’re looking for the root issues that crime more likely. We spend a lot of time analyzing data to find problems and measure success.”
One measure of that success is just catching bad guys in the act. The Milwaukee police have used ShotSpotter to catch several criminals shortly after they fired shots. ShotSpotter data has been used to obtain convictions in several cases, including a murder conviction. The latitude and longitude locations also help police recover shell casings, which are used to provide forensic evidence in court. But Flynn doesn’t only see ShotSpotter as a tool for a fast response.
“It does that, and it does it well,” he said. “But we also want to use it to build up neighborhoods. People in the community are very supportive, because it enables us to catch people before a 911 call is made. It also lets us catch people without neighbors being accused of ‘snitching.’”
That latter point is important when you consider that in the neighborhoods where ShotSpotter is deployed, Milwaukee police determined that only about 14% of them were reported to 911. The company told me that similar numbers have been seen in other neighborhoods where the system is deployed.
Chief Flynn is also seeing measurable results. The number of shots fired in the area where ShotSpotter is deployed has seen a year to date reduction of 18%. They’re also using the patterns of the gunfire to identify drug markets and gang battles so that the police can effectively intervene in the area.
“Gunfire is a symptom,” he said. “It often means something else. We use it in conjunction with other data to pinpoint the intelligence we need.”
That support from law enforcement has enabled the company to successfully sell its services to more and more communities over the years, as well as attract investors. The company has raised $62 million from its investors (but would not disclose its revenues).
Despite the endorsement of law enforcement, though, not everyone is convinced about the usefulness of the technology. That’s largely because independent data about ShotSpotter is pretty thin on the ground.
“It’s a neat technology,” University of California Berkeley Criminologist Frank Zmiring told me. “But the real question is the cost and benefit for police response. There are very effective ways of evaluating this, but it’s not clear that this has been done.”
“In general, though, policing is so goddamn labor intensive that any technologies that displace human labor would be terrific,” he continued. “Whether this is worth it is an answerable question. The problem is that there is no department rigorously studying this kind of urban policing.”
“In general, though, policing is so goddamn labor intensive that any technologies that displace human labor would be terrific,” he continued. “Whether this is worth it is an answerable question. The problem is that there is no department rigorously studying this kind of urban policing.”
One study that has been performed was in 2008 of the SECURES system, which was purchased by ShotSpotter in 2009. That study was led by Peter Scharf, a criminologist at Tulane University. That study found some high number of false positives in one area where it was deployed, especially when fireworks were set off. However, in another area of deployment, they found a higher level of accuracy. That system, however, didn’t have a human listener to analyze shots the way the current one does.
“They’re trying to avoid the false positives by having a human person listen in,” Scharf told me. “But there needs to be a study done to see how that improves the accuracy.”
For Scharf, one of the biggest questions is whether the return on investment is worth it. It may be, he said, for bigger cities. “But you might have to seriously ask if it’s rational for smaller markets.”
That said, he does think that the technology is worth developing. “I think that this is like the airplane in 1912,” he told me. “It’s a promising note on a series on integrated technologies that are coming down the pike.”
ShotSpotter itself, however, is eager to provide as much data as it can. “We are passionate about data at the local level to help cities address gun violence issues,” ShotSpotter President and CEO Ralph Clark told me. “Now we’re excited about a second chapter for our company to aggregate data and help inform policy decisions and discussions happening at a Federal level.”
“The data that local law enforcement agencies have is limited, incomplete and noisy,” he continued. “We want to tell the ground truth as to where they were deployed.”
Data aside, though, anyone reading this article so far has probably wondered about what Scharf calls the “1984 issues.”
“It’s a little creepy that you can police without touching the community,” Scharf told me. “So there’s a sci-fi part of the technology that bothers me a little bit.”
In light of the debate over the NSA’s surveillance operations, I had to admit that the privacy issues bothered me, too. So I asked Clark about how the system impacts the privacy of people in the neighborhoods where ShotSpotter is deployed.
“That’s a timely question,” he said. “But first of all, this is a passive technology. We refer to them as sensors rather than microphones because it’s important distinction. The system is programmed to detect impulsive noises. In order to get what we need and not have them going off all the time, we have to deploy them about 30 feet in the air.”
“We don’t record everything,” he continued. “We’re just listening to the ‘booms and bangs.’”
For the company, though, the bottom line is about assisting local law enforcement in making safer neighborhoods.
“We’ve become a source of data that police don’t otherwise have,” Clark said. “We allow them to analyze which of their neighborhoods have the most gun violence so that police can mobilize the right resources.”
And maybe, in the end, make sure we live in a world where the bad guys can’t win.
Everyone should know this by now: Never count Oprah out. Despite business stumbles and an $88 million earnings drop since last year, Oprah Winfreyreturns to the top of Forbes’ annual Celebrity 100 ranking of the most powerful celebrities after two years in second place. She leads a female-dominated top 10 that includes Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Madonna, Taylor Swiftand Ellen DeGeneres.
Even without her eponymous daytime talk show, Winfrey made an estimated $77 million between June 2012 and June 2013, down from last year’s $165 million. While she wasn’t the highest earner on our list, her money, mixed with strong fame scores in metrics like press mentions and social networking power, pushed her to the top.
Winfrey remains a powerful force in Hollywood. Her Oprah Winfrey Network, once a drifting cable outpost that lost an estimated $330 million for parent company Discovery between 2008 and the end of 2012, is now a smoothish-running media machine that could turn a profit by the end of 2013.
Mistakes like Rose O’Donnell’s talk show? History. Nailing must-see viewing, like her two-night interview with disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, is Winfrey’s focus now, as are scripted shows with help from fellow Celebrity 100 member Tyler Perry. In the near future, shows that don’t star Winfrey could become as much of a draw as her own programs. Winfrey also earns from an empire that includes her O magazine, talk shows from protégés like Rachael Ray and Dr. Phil, and a network on SiriusXM satellite radio.
Unlike most FORBES lists, which are based on earnings or net worth, our annual Celebrity 100 takes a stab at measuring that most ephemeral of riches: fame. Yes, we factor in celebrity earnings over the last 12 months, but we also tally how often each celebrity is mentioned in print and on TV, and gauge the strength of their Internet presence and how they’re viewed by a critical constituency: American consumers.
This year we added a marketability score (1-100) for each celebrity that was developed by Encino, Calif.-based market research firm E-Poll, based on opinion polling about 46 different attributes for 6,600 different celebrities. Will Smith, Jennifer Aniston and Sandra Bullock are the most marketable celebrities on our list (Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James ranks dead last in that category).
For social networking strength, we worked with another new partner, Starcount, a Singapore-based company that measures impact across 11 social media platforms including Facebook FB +0.03%, Twitter, YouTube and Google GOOG +1.57% +. Each celebrity’s Starcount number gives a sense of how popular he or she is on the Internet.
Pop stars tend to do very well on this metric. Last year’s Celebrity 100 cover boy, Justin Bieber, has the most social networking power of the 100 celebrities on our list, followed by Rihanna and Lady Gaga.
Of course, because we’re FORBES, money carries the most weight in our rankings, and thanks to that Madonna is back on the Celeb 100–in fifth place–after two years off the list. Even though her newest album, MDNA, was a flop, the Material Girl still managed to rank as this year’s top earner thanks to a world tour that helped her rake in $125 million between June 2012 and June 2013.
Lady Gaga, who topped our list in 2011 and is often considered Madonna’s heir, ranks second despite cutting her tour short due to a hip injury. Gaga still managed to earn $80 million and get the second-most press mentions of anyone on our list (behind Rihanna). Gaga is also a master of social networking. Her Little Monsters hang on her every tweet, making her the third most successful social networker on our list.
Together with Beyonce (fourth,) Taylor Swift (sixth) and Ellen Degeneres (10th) women occupy six of the top 10 slots on this year’s list, down from seven last year. Overall, they landed 35 of 100 slots, about the same as last year.
The four men who crack the top 10 are director Steven Spielberg (third), rock band Bon Jovi (seventh), tennis player Roger Federer (eighth), and pop star Bieber (ninth).
Spielberg is up seven spots from last year, with estimated earnings of $100 million. The director was back in peak form with political biopic Lincoln. The film not only earned two Oscars, it also grossed a tidy $275 million at the global box office on a budget of $65 million. Spielberg’s TV work isn’t going quite as well, DreamWorks’ Smash was recently canceled by NBC. But he’s got several new shows in the works, including a small screen version of the popular video game, Halo.
Federer, the highest-ranked athlete on our list, is up 23 spots from last year thanks to the most impressive endorsement portfolio in sports. Ten sponsors collectively pay him more than $40 million annually. He’s also a press darling. Federer ranks seventh for celebrities with the most mentions in print.
Last year’s number one, Jennifer Lopez, falls to 12th place on our list this time around. With American Idol in her rearview mirror, Lopez just doesn’t carry the same buzz as a year ago, despite the ratings implosion of the show. No worries, though. She still managed to pull in $45 million from a major concert tour and endless endorsement work.
Tiny, biodegradable implants known as Bioneedles may soon replace the syringe, vial and needle trifecta as the standard delivery mechanism for vaccines.
If they are as clean, cheap and reliable as many medical researchers believe, Bioneedles will reduce hepatitis and HIV infection and vaccinate 25 million more children worldwide.
This is one of many massively promising technologies pioneered in the city ofEindhoven, a mid-sized city located in the southern region of the Netherlands.
Eindhoven is hands-down the most inventive city in the world based on one of the most commonly used metrics for mapping the geography of innovation, which is called “patent intensity.”
More specifically, Eindhoven produced 22.6 patents for every 10,000 residents, making it the world’s most inventive city, according to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development.
To put this in perspective, San Diego, which claimed the second spot on the list, produces only 8.9 patents for every 10,000 residents.
The OECD tracks patent applications for more than 250 cities around the world under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, an international system that allows inventors to apply for patent protection in up to 117 countries simultaneously through a single application process.
Based on the total number of patent applications for every 10,000 residents in a metropolitan area, the world’s 15 most inventive cities are concentrated in northern Europe and the United States.
Eindhoven is emblematic of the “knowledge economy” and has the awards to prove it.
For several years now, the Intelligent Community Forum has ranked Eindhoven as one of the world’s most intelligent communities for several consecutive years. In 2011, Eindhoven claimed the top spot in ICF’s annual rankings.
Oddly, not a single Japanese city ranks in the world’s 15 most inventive cities, which is dominated by cities in the United States (six cities on the list), Germany (four cities on the list) and Sweden (three cities on the list).
| Eindhoven | Netherlands | 22.58 |
| San Diego | United States | 8.95 |
| San Francisco | United States | 7.57 |
| Malmö | Sweden | 6.85 |
| Grenoble | France | 6.23 |
| Stuttgart | Germany | 6.18 |
| Boston | United States | 5.80 |
| Stockholm | Sweden | 5.72 |
| Minneapolis | United States | 5.06 |
| München | Germany | 4.97 |
| Mannheim | Germany | 4.95 |
| Göteborg | Sweden | 4.40 |
| Seattle | United States | 4.25 |
| København | Denmark | 3.75 |
While all three of Sweden’s three most populated cities are on the list of the top 15 most inventive cities, the smallest of those three cities is the highest on the list.
The city of Malmö in southern Sweden ranks fourth on the list of cities with the most patent applications per 10,000 residents.
Malmo is young with nearly half of its population under the age of 35. It is also diverse, boasting the highest proportion of foreign-born residents of anycity in Sweden.
