The Global Innovation Index 2021 is out

Every year, the World Intellectual Property Organization publishes the so-called Global Innovation Index. In this post, we take a quick look at the key takeaways of the new Global Innovation Index 2021 and examine what the new report has to tell us.

The full report runs to a hefty 226 pages! So for those of you in a hurry, I summarize the most important findings in this blog post. I was particularly proud to learn that Europe continues to deliver top performance, even though the doom-mongering in the media and politics often suggests otherwise.

What is interesting about this year's Global Innovation Index 2021 (GII 2021) is that it tries to analyze the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on innovation: How does the pandemic affect (venture) investments? What consequences does the pandemic have for the startup market in individual countries, and much more.

Before we get started and dive into the deeper analysis, I would like to briefly introduce the framework the Global Innovation Index follows. There are seven categories in total, each backed by individual sub-indicators. These indicators are then used to create an index, which ultimately forms the ranking.

1. Contrary to all expectations, investments have held up stubbornly. They even continued to grow compared to the all-time high of 2019 (before the pandemic).
2. Technological progress continues, especially in ICT and renewable energy.
3. Only a few economies show consistently high top performance in innovation, such as Switzerland. Overall, the most innovative companies come from Europe.
4. Middle-income countries are on the rise, such as India, China or Turkey.
5. Some developing countries, such as Kenya, perform better than expected.
6. The geography of global innovation is changing unevenly. While regions such as North America and Europe remain very strong, many countries such as Iran, South Africa or Chile lag far behind.
7. New scientific and technological innovations are limited to a handful of countries – so they are not equally available to everyone.

What I like about the Global Innovation Index are the many visual summaries. The dashboard shows that available knowledge continues to grow strongly – as can be seen from the rising number of scientific publications. But technological progress also keeps advancing. The number of transistors is rising, and the cost of generating renewable energy is falling.

R&D investments in the various sectors of the economy in particular are an indicator of innovation. That makes the chart showing which sectors invest very heavily (software) all the more interesting.

I think it is a pity that Europe continues to struggle with large VC deals compared to the Asian region. It confirms the assumption that our willingness to take risks is comparatively low.

Now, of course, the exciting question is which countries are among the "winners". I find it very clear that there is both an overall overview and a breakdown by region. Switzerland is very strong here! For many years, it has ranked among the world's best.

Finally, I would like to show you the result for Switzerland, which is especially interesting for us. You can see the individual evaluation criteria, which are based on the seven characteristics of the GII framework.

You can download the full report from the WIPO website. Enjoy!

View the Global Innovation Index 2021