Dubai – Masaader News
Switzerland took the first position again in the latest Global Innovation Index – a title it has held since 2011, according to the World Economic Forum.
So is there a Swiss recipe for success? The small, landlocked country punches far above its weight in patenting, intellectual property receipts and manufacturing of high-tech products, according to the report.
Sweden is ranked second followed by the United States, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
Each year the index, produced by the UN World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business, and graduate business school INSEAD, ranks the innovation performance of nearly 130 economies around the world.
It does this using 80 indicators ranging from research and development expenditure and patent and trademark applications to newer measurements such as mobile app creation and high-tech exports.
This year, notably, the US re-entered the top five, having fallen to sixth in 2018.
In addition to ranking the world’s most innovative economies, the index highlights regional leaders in innovation (the US, Chile, Switzerland, India, South Africa, Israel and Singapore) and the best performers by income group (Switzerland, China, Vietnam and Rwanda).
China – the only middle-income economy in the top 30 – continues to power its way up the index, moving from 17th position in 2018 to 14th.
Now established as a “world innovation leader”, China ranks highly for patents, industrial designs and trademarks by origin, as well as high-tech and creative goods exports. It’s also home to 18 of the index’s top 100 science and technology clusters – second only to the US.