The World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) Global Innovation Index (GII) is a helpful indicator of geographical areas that are active when it comes to innovation. It also provides an up-to-date view of the important global innovation topics and trends.
Now in its 15th year, the comprehensive analysis of innovation input and output activity helps to determine the innovation position of global economies and areas in comparison with each other.
These rankings can help to provide a barometer of innovation around the world as well as help summarise the impact that innovation is having on global growth.
The 2022 GII reports that innovation investment remains high though this investment is not necessarily creating the expected impact. Slow adoption of technology and a stilted ability to translate innovations into productive implementation is seen as a key challenge to address.
In terms of the country rankings, Switzerland remains the highest-ranking country for level of innovation investment and success, and Europe features the largest number of top-ranking countries, reconfirming its place as a world-leading innovation area.
Emerging economies are also making their presence known and performing well, especially when compared to the relative size of their economies. Newcomers to the rankings include Indonesia, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. This indicates the future potential of a truly global innovation landscape.
The 2022 GII highlights two ‘innovation waves’ that WIPO believes to be influential in driving growth in the future:
A digital age innovation – supercomputing, AI and automation
A Deep Science innovation – biotechnology, nanotechnology and new materials.
These developments are likely to have a particular impact in areas such as Health, Food, Environment and Mobility.
The potential of these innovation waves though is likely to take some time to materialise, the report warns. In order for innovations to improve society and improve equality, obstacles such as technology adoption and diffusion need to be overcome first.
“Productivity is at the core of what we want our societies and economies to be tomorrow, in particular if we want to combine higher levels of equality while using natural resources more sensibly. A true revolution is driving innovation today, guided by Digital Age and Deep Science waves. We have a collective responsibility to draw the lessons of recent crises to put this revolution on the right track, and gear it to the future we want.”
You can read the full 2022 Global Innovation Index here.
