Building on the theory of emergence, this paper provides robust empirical confirmation using comparative data across multiple global regions. The number of threshold-crossover events, from below to above $1 billion in recorded personal wealth, per year per urban center provides the basis for our evaluation of innovation activity. The change in count, rather than total wealth, was chosen to limit the effects of fluctuations such as the rapidly changing market capitalizations of many billionaires’ public companies. Further, this distinction centers the creation of a new billionaire as a distinct sociological event rather than a piece of an aggregate wealth in each urban center. The results demonstrate consistent patterns across diverse institutional environments, supporting the generalizability of the emergence framework while clarifying its scope conditions. The paper contributes to debates about prediction and confirmation by showing how mechanism-based theories can travel across contexts without relying on universal laws. Instead, prediction is framed as conditional on identifiable social processes.