The Centre for International Competitiveness recently released the 2008 World Knowledge Competitiveness Index (available for free download here), which shows North America beginning to lag in knowledge dominance, with Europe and Asia picking up the slack.

The shift in knowledge dominance has seen old guard Western centres (like New York, Washington and London — London dropping all the way from 46th to 102nd) losing ranking to smaller American cities such as Hartford and Bridgeport, as well as smaller European nations.

The report compares 145 regions across 19 different knowledge economy benchmarks. It’s worth noting however that the top 5 spots are still all in the U.S.: San Jose (#1), Boston (#2), Hartford (#3), Bridgeport (#4) and San Francisco (#5).

The persisent ascent of cities like Stockholm and Tokyo is also interesting to note, as well as the fact that Shanghai has now moved ahead of both Berlin and the Canadian province of British Columbia. China’s Guangdong region also comes first in the study’s Regional Knowledge Intensity index (a measure comparing the knowledge base of a region to its economic output).