TEHRAN –According to the 18th edition of the Global Innovation Index (GII) report, the Islamic Republic of Iran ranks second among the countries of the Central and South Asian region, unchanged over the last three years.

GII 2025 measures innovation performance across 139 economies and unveils the world’s top 100 innovation clusters. It tracks global innovation trends through investment patterns, technological progress, adoption rates, and socioeconomic impacts.

According to this year’s report, Iran ranks 70th among the 139 economies featured in the GII 2025. In 2024, the country ranked 64th among the 133 economies featured in the GII.

The country ranks 17th among the 36 upper middle-income group economies; in 2024, Iran ranks 5th among the 38 lower-middle-income group economies.

The GII ranks world economies according to their innovation capabilities. Consisting of roughly 80 indicators, grouped into innovation inputs and outputs, the GII aims to capture the multi-dimensional facets of innovation.

As stated in the 2025 edition, over the past six years (2020-2025), the statistical confidence interval for the ranking of Iran is between ranks 56 and 75.

Iran performs better in innovation outputs than in innovation inputs in 2025. This year, Iran ranks 109th in innovation inputs, which is lower than last year (85th).

Iran ranks 46th in innovation outputs. This position is higher than last year (48th).

For Iran, 5 indicators have improved in the short-term (International patent filings, Connectivity, Robots, Labor productivity, Life expectancy), and 5 indicators have worsened (Scientific publications, Research and development (R&D) investments, Venture capital deal Numbers, Fixed broadband, and temperature change).

Iran ranks highest in Creative outputs (45th), Knowledge and technology outputs (46th), and Human capital and research (66th).

The country ranks lowest in Institutions (138th), Business sophistication (107th), and Infrastructure (98th).

Iran performs above the Upper middle-income group average in Human capital and research (Iran’s score is 32.43, while the upper middle-income score is 29.7); Knowledge and Technology outputs Iran’s score is 27.46, whereas the upper middle-income score is 20.0; and Creative outputs (Iran’s score is 31.87, while the upper middle-income score is 22.6).

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

It ranks 2nd, 5th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 14th, 14th, 22nd, and 23rd in Trademarks by origin, Software spending, Gross capital formation, Graduates in science and engineering, Labor productivity growth, Industrial designs by origin, Patents by origin, Domestic market scale, and High-tech imports, respectively.

The Innovation cluster ranking of the GII identifies local concentrations of innovation activity. Innovation clusters are established through the analysis of patent-filing activity, scientific article publication, and venture capital (VC) activity, documenting the geographical areas around the world with the highest density of inventors, scientific authors, and venture capitalists.

Switzerland remains the world’s innovation leader in 2025. China enters the top 10 for the first time, while middle-income economies – India, Turkey, Viet Nam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Morocco, Albania, and Iran – are the fastest climbers since 2013.

GII has ranked Tehran as the world’s 63rd-largest science and technology (S&T) cluster this year, according to a report released by the UN’s WIPO.

The GII reveals the top innovation clusters worldwide by size and intensity. In 2025, three metrics define the top 100 clusters globally. The first metric focuses on the location of inventors listed in published patent applications under the WIPO Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

The second metric considers the authors listed on published scientific articles. These two metrics have served as the foundation for cluster identification across previous GII editions. This year, however, the GII  introduced a third metric, namely Venture capital (VC) deal locations.

In Asia, there are four clusters, including Tel Aviv-Jerusalem (19), Starbucks (58), Tehran (63), and Cairo (83).

Tehran is the only cluster within Iran that falls within the top 100 innovation clusters in 2025. It filed 49 Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications, published 8,269 scientific articles, and had 12 venture capital deals, all per 1 million inhabitants over the latest five years, making it the 63rd largest innovation cluster and 85th innovation cluster by intensity (relative to population density) in 2025.

Top publishing organizations in Tehran are University of Tehran with 7,275 articles (12 percent share), the Islamic Azad University with 5,763 articles (10 percent share), and Tehran University of Medical Sciences with 5,158 articles (9 percent share).

Top PCT applicants are Mohammad Abdolahi with 16  patents (four percent share), Ahmad Ghanbari with 5 patents (one percent share), and Mohammad Durali with five patents (one percent).

Some 4 percent of Tehran’s PCT patent applications are filed in collaboration with other inventors, with Los Angeles, Graz, and Vienna emerging as the top collaborative locations; 26 percent of Tehran’s scientific articles are published in collaboration with other organizations, with the top three collaborating locations being Seoul, London, and Boston–Cambridge.

In 2025, Tehran had 357 PCT applications, 60,217 scientific publications, 85 venture capital deals, 0.03 Share of global PCT applications, 0.73 share of global scientific publications, and 0.04 share of global venture capital deals.

The city’s estimated cluster population, PCT application per capita, and scientific publication capita amount to 7.2 trillion dollars, 49 million dollars, and 8.2 billion dollars, respectively.

The venture capital pre-deals per capita is about 11.67, and the total innovation intensity share per capita is 0.11.

In 2025, Tehran’s ranking lowered to 63rd, mainly due to the introduction of VC deal counts as a variable in this year’s methodology, not the reduction in academic capacity of the city.

GII 2025

After a decade of rapid expansion in R&D spending and venture capital investment, a shift is witnessed.  R&D growth has declined to its slowest pace since the global financial crisis, and global venture capital deals have not recovered from the severe downturn in 2023.

However, even if innovation investment is in a lull, innovation itself is not. Green supercomputers are setting new efficiency records. Battery prices and genome sequencing costs continue to fall. Adoption of electric vehicles, 5G, and robotics is gaining ground, albeit unevenly across regions.

And while the full impact of artificial intelligence remains uncertain, its transformative potential is undeniable.

What is particularly encouraging in this year’s findings is how innovation momentum is diversifying across regions.

The GII 2025 shows strong performances across middle-income economies. China, India, Turkey, and Viet Nam continue to climb in the ranking. Others, including Senegal, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, and Rwanda, are emerging as dynamic innovation overperformers.

Regions such as Central and Southern Asia and the Middle East are steadily advancing, contributing to a more diverse innovation landscape.

New features of GII 2025 include expanded global coverage, with six more countries: the Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Lesotho, Malawi, Seychelles, and Venezuela.

This edition also further improves the GII Innovation Ecosystems & Data Explorer, which aims to empower decision makers by offering in-depth views of their economies’ innovation systems, from persistent strengths to areas of untapped potential.

Another new element is the integration of venture capital activity into the innovation cluster ranking for the first time. The result is a sharper picture of the ecosystems turning scientific discovery into entrepreneurial success — ranging from cities such as Bangalore, Cairo, Mexico City, and Paris to multi-city hubs like Silicon Valley and southern China’s Greater Bay Area.