The Global Innovation Index (GII) is an annual ranking of countries by their capacity for, and success in, innovation. It was first published in 2007 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Cornell University, and INSEAD. The GII measures a country’s innovation performance across various criteria, including research and development spending, patent applications, venture capital investments, university-industry collaboration, and the number of scientific publications.
The GII provides an essential tool for policymakers to identify areas where their countries can improve innovation performance. Businesses also use it to identify potential markets or partners for collaboration. In addition, the GII has been used to measure countries’ progress towards achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The GII comprises two sub-indices: the Input Sub-Index and Output Sub-Index. The Input Sub-Index measures the quality and quantity of resources invested in innovation activities such as research and development spending, human capital investments, infrastructure investments, and business environment factors. The Output Sub-Index measures the results of these investments, such as patent applications, venture capital investments, university-industry collaboration, and scientific publications.
Each year’s GII report includes a detailed analysis of each country’s performance on both sub-indices and an overall ranking of countries based on their total score. In addition to providing rankings for individual countries, the report also provides regional rankings for different regions worldwide.
In recent years Switzerland has consistently topped the GII rankings due to its strong performance across all criteria measured by the index. Other countries that have performed well in recent years include Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.