TEHRAN –According to the 2024 edition of the Global Innovation Index (GII) report, the Islamic Republic of Iran ranks second among the countries of the Central and Southern Asian region, unchanged compared with the last two years.

India and Kazakhstan ranked first and third, respectively. According to this year's report, Iran ranks 5th among the 38 lower-middle-income group economies, which has improved compared to the 2023 ranking, 6th.

However, the country's ranking, among the 133 economies featured in the GII 2024,  has dropped from 62 in 2023 to 64th this year.

Switzerland secured the first rank in the GII 2024 report with a score of 67.5 for the 14th consecutive year, closely followed by Sweden and the US at the second and third positions with scores of 64.5 and 62.4, respectively.

As stated in the 2024 edition, over the past four years (2020-2024), the statistical confidence interval for the ranking of Iran in the GII 2024 is between ranks 56 and 80.

Iran performs better in innovation outputs (48th) than in innovation inputs (85th)in 2024.

Published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the report ranks Iran first in Market capitalization, and Trademarks by origin.

It ranks 3rd,  5th, 8th, 17th, 19th, 23rd, and 35th in Software spending, Gross capital formation, Graduates in science and engineering, market sophistication, Domestic market scale, Intangible asset intensity, and Tertiary education, respectively.

Iran (Islamic Republic of) ranks highest in Market sophistication (17th), Knowledge and technology outputs (49th), Creative outputs (52nd), and Human capital and research (64th).

Iran (Islamic Republic of) ranks lowest in Institutions (133rd), Business sophistication (110th), and Infrastructure (95th).

The GII has ranked Tehran as the world’s 38th–largest science and technology (S&T) cluster this year, down from 35th last year, according to a report released on Tuesday by the UN’s WIPO.

The Global Innovation Index ranks the world’s leading economies according to their innovation capabilities.

A common thread among top-performing nations is the presence of thriving science and technology (S&T) clusters. Since 2016, the GII has employed a bottom-up approach to identifying such clusters. This methodology disregards administrative or political borders and instead pinpoints those geographical areas with a high density of inventors and scientific authors.

GII 2024

GII 2024 thematic focus asks ‘Is Social Entrepreneurship on the Rise? What will it take for social entrepreneurship to catalyze transformative innovation and societal impact?’

This year’s GII highlights the growing significance of “social entrepreneurship,” a crucial source of innovation often overlooked by policymakers, innovation economists, development agencies, and funding institutions.

Social entrepreneurship marries business practices with social goals to address some of the world’s most pressing social and environmental challenges, such as creating jobs, providing education, improving infrastructure, and developing tailor-made sustainable solutions for local needs.

However, realizing the full potential of social entrepreneurship requires a supportive ecosystem, including regulatory and legal frameworks, funding mechanisms, and training programs to recognize and support social entrepreneurs.

The GII 2024 has brought together analysis and policy guidance from key actors in the field of social entrepreneurship, such as the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, and Catalyst 2030, along with top social entrepreneurs and innovation experts.

They shed light on the underexplored linkages between innovation and social entrepreneurship, making social entrepreneurship a prominent part of the international development and innovation policy dialogue, and a growing area of interest for cross-border cooperation.

GII key findings

Following a boom between 2020 and 2022, scientific publications, venture capital (VC), and international patent filings experienced a downturn in 2023, and research and development expenditures (R&D) slowed.

VC and scientific publications have declined sharply back to pre-pandemic levels, with a pronounced impact on emerging regions such as Latin America and Africa.

Reflecting a deteriorating climate for risk finance, the value of VC investments has been falling sharply from the exceptionally high levels of 2021, with a 36 percent drop in 2022 followed by a further 39 percent drop in 2023.

The number of VC deals has also decreased, experiencing a downturn of 9.5 percent in 2023.

International patent filings saw a decline of 1.8 percent in 2023, marking the first such decline since 2009.

Global R&D grew at a rate of 5 percent in 2022 – slightly down from 2021 – but is projected to slow to 3 percent in 2023 in real terms.

In 2023, spending by corporations representing the largest investors in R&D grew by around 6 percent in real terms. This lags the long-term growth rate for the last 10 years (around 8 percent) and is down from peaks between 10-15 percent between 2019–2021 and from pre-pandemic growth rates.

Technology continues to progress rapidly, particularly in health-related fields and computing power. Technology adoption is also growing, particularly in 5G – with close to a 25 percent increase in coverage in 2022, robotics, and electric vehicles (EVs) – where the global stock of EVs increased by 54 percent in 2022.

However, the progress in green technologies in the last year has been slower than the average for the decade, highlighting the difficulty in reducing the energy consumption of supercomputers and maintaining the decrease in electric battery prices.

GII 2023

According to the 2023 edition of the Global Innovation Index (GII) report, the Islamic Republic of Iran ranked second among the countries of the Central and Southern Asian region.

The report ranked Iran 19th, 43rd, and 55th in “Market sophistication”, “Creative outputs”, and “Knowledge and technology outputs”, respectively.

The GII 2023 used 80 indicators to track global innovation trends in 130-plus economies, guiding policymakers and business leaders in stimulating human ingenuity. The report’s findings were unveiled against a background of slow economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, high interest rates, and geopolitical conflict.

The 2023 edition identified an increasingly uncertain outlook for venture capital (VC) that helps transform human ingenuity into new products and services, with the global value of VC funding marking a significant plunge last year.

According to the GII 2023 rankings, Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore were the top countries.

China, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Iran were the middle-income economies making the most headway in innovation over the last decade.

In knowledge and technology outputs, creative outputs, market sophistication, human capital, and research, and infrastructure, Iran’s performance was above the average of the lower middle-income group.

On the other hand, Iran performed above the regional average (Central and South Asia) in all these indexes, except for the infrastructure.

Under the 6.2.2 index, which was presented in the 2022 report under the title of “New Businesses” and in the new report under the title of “Unicorn Valuation”, Iran’s rank had risen from 90 in 2022 to 48 in 2023.

Iran had no data for 10 out of 80 indicators evaluated and 18 indicators were not up-to-date, which requires inter-institutional coordination with the evaluator institution to include a more accurate and realistic assessment of the country’s state of innovation development.

Iran’s main innovation strengths are Trademark by origin (rank 1) graduates in science and engineering (rank 3),  Market capitalization ( rank 5), gross capital formation (rank 9), industrial designs (11), and intangible assets (13).

MT/MG