Switzerland leads Global Innovation Index 2022

Switzerland, the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are the Top 5 economies in this year’s Global Innovation Index (GII), with China on the threshold of the top 10. Other emerging economies are also showing consistently strong performance, including India and Türkiye, both of which enter the top 40 for the first time.

In its annual ranking of the world’s economies on innovation capacity and output, the GII shows some key changes in the top 15 of the ranking, with the United States climbing to the 2nd position, the Netherlands reaching the 5th position, Singapore reaching 7th, Germany reaching 8th and China up one place to 11th and on the doorstep of the top 10.

The report shows that research and development (R&D) and other investments that drive worldwide innovative activity continued to boom in 2021. The top global corporate R&D spenders increased their R&D expenditure by almost 10 percent to over USD 900 billion in 2021, higher than in 2019 before the pandemic.

While innovation investments surged, the outlook for 2022 is clouded not just by global uncertainties but continued underperformance in innovation-driven productivity. The GII finds that productivity growth - normally spurred by increased innovation - has in fact stagnated. It also finds that current technological progress and adoption show signs of slowing growth despite the recent flourishing of R&D expenditure and venture capital investments.

Switzerland is no exception. It performs well in innovation outputs however weakness include labor productivity growth. Switzerland ranks 65th by this criterion. Other weaknesses include ICT services exports and domestic industry diversification. Strengths include policies for doing business, university-industry R&D collaboration and ICT use.