Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, Singapore and the United Kingdom are the world’s most-innovative economies, while China, Türkiye, India, Viet Nam and the Philippines1 are the fastest 10-year climbers, according to WIPO’s Global Innovation Index (GII) 2024, which shows a softening in venture capital activity, R&D funding and other investment indicators.
Now in its 17th edition, the GII is the world's benchmark resource charting global innovation trends to guide policy makers, business leaders and others in unleashing human ingenuity to improve lives and address shared challenges, like climate change. This year, the GII also looks at “social entrepreneurship,” which uses private-sector practices for positive social change.
The 2024 edition identifies a major softening in leading indicators of future innovative activity, including a reversal of the 2020-2022 boom in innovation investments. Amid higher interest rates, venture capital (VC) funding dropped by about 40 percent in 2023 and growth slipped in research and development (R&D) expenditures, while international patent filings and scientific publications fell.
In 2023, we saw a decline in R&D expenditures, a reduction in scientific publications, and a scaling back of venture capital investments to pre-pandemic levels,” said WIPO Director General Daren Tang. “However, technological progress remained strong in 2023, particularly in health-related fields like genome sequencing, as well as in computing power and electric batteries. Technology adoption also deepened, especially in 5G, robotics, and electric vehicles. This year’s GII also reveals positive trends in key indicators, including a decline in global poverty and rises in labor productivity and life expectancy.
In the GII ranking of 130-plus economies, China reached the 11th position and remains the only middle-income economy in the GII top 30.
A total of 19 economies outperformed on innovation relative to their level of development. India, the Republic of Moldova and Viet Nam are all innovation overperformers for 14 years in a row.
In more recent years, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Brazil, Indonesia, Mauritius and Pakistan have climbed most in the GII (in order of their ranking). Indonesia, Pakistan and Uzbekistan maintain their overperformer status for a third year and Brazil for a fourth consecutive year.