Most Innovative Countries in 2023

The Most Innovative Countries in the World in 2023

Which countries are the global innovation powerhouses?

In many ways, the past year has represented an inflection point in technological advancement. Almost overnight, OpenAI’s large language model ChatGPT became a household name and AI was within reach to the masses.

Yet looking under the surface, innovation is influenced by several unseen factors, from the institutional environment and high-tech exports to research talent and entrepreneurship culture.

This graphic shows the most innovative countries in the world, based on the 2023 Global Innovation Index (GII) put together by the World Intellectual Property Organization.

How is Innovation Measured?

The GII framework uses seven pillars and 80 indicators to assess a country’s innovative strength:

Innovation Pillar	Example Indicators
Knowledge & Tech Outputs	Patent applications, Hi-tech manufacturing
Human Capital & Research	Researchers per million population, Global corporate R&D investors
Business Sophistication	Knowledge-intensive employment, University-industry R&D collaboration
Market Sophistication	Finance for startups, Venture capital received
Creative Outputs	Trademark applications, Global brand value
Infrastructure	Environmental performance, Information and communication technology access
Institutions	Regulatory quality, Policies for doing business

Together, the sum of these pillars produces an overall score for each country.

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Most Innovative Countries in 2023

For the 13th consecutive year, Switzerland was named the world’s most innovative country.

Among the key factors underscoring its rank are its policies for doing business and its scale of patent applications. Its world-class research institutions and skilled workforce are also key ingredients in fostering innovation.

Below, we show the most innovative countries in 2023 across 132 economies:

Rank	Country	Score
1	Switzerland	67.6
2	Sweden	64.2
3	U.S.	63.5
4	UK	62.4
5	Singapore	61.5
6	Finland	61.2
7	Netherlands	60.4
8	Germany	58.8
9	Denmark	58.7
10	South Korea	58.6

For full methodology notes on which economies are included in the report, see the bottom of the article.

Sweden ranked second, rising above the U.S. this year. The country excelled in business sophistication, knowledge-intensive employment, and researchers per capita.

While the U.S. ranked third overall, it saw the highest scores in venture capital received, global corporate research and development (R&D) investors, and total unicorn value. Of the 1,206 global unicorns as of April 2023, the U.S. was home to 54% of the total.

At fifth overall, Singapore ranked the highest in Asia. As both a financial hub and global innovator, Singapore ranked strongly on government effectiveness, venture capital received, and stability for business. It has the highest venture funding per capita in the world.

Brazil (49th) ranked highest in Latin America, while Mauritius (57th) was the top-ranking country in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Top 25 Science & Technology Clusters

Here are the top science and technology (S&T) clusters per capita, based on the density of scientific authors and inventors in a geographic location:

2023 Ranking	Cluster	Economy	Top Applicant	Top Scientific Organization
1	Cambridge	UK	ARM	Cambridge University
2	San Jose– San Francisco	U.S.	Google	Stanford University
3	Oxford	UK	Oxford University	Oxford University
4	Eindhoven	Netherlands	Philips Electronics	Eindhoven University of Technology
5	Boston– Cambridge	U.S.	MIT	MIT
6	Daejeon	South Korea	LG Chem	KAIST
7	Ann Arbor	U.S.	University of Michigan	University of Michigan
8	San Diego	U.S.	Qualcomm	University of California San Diego
9	Seattle	U.S.	Microsoft	University of Washington Seattle
10	Munich	Germany	BMW	Technical University of Munich

As the top S&T cluster by intensity, Cambridge produced 37,000 articles per million people. Its top applicant, ARM, is a semiconductor company working closely with Cambridge University. Over 130 billion devices globally have used chips based on ARM’s designs.

The San Jose-San Francisco cluster ranked second, with Google as the top applicant. In 2022, the U.S. granted Google’s parent company Alphabet 2,077 patents.

South Korea’s Daejeon cluster is the top in Asia, led by battery maker LG Chem. In 2022, over 49,000 domestic and overseas patents were registered. In fact, both Honda and GM are partnering with LG Chem to build multi-billion dollar battery factories in Ohio over the next few years.

As we can see, many of the world’s most innovative countries have strong clusters that attract tech firms, researchers, and knowledge-intensive workers due to a host of factors that support disruption and tech advancement.

These tech clusters have a powerful effect on creating innovations that extend across multiple sectors of the economy, and the wider global landscape.