A very few terms have more power than the term innovation; innovation refers to implementing new processes, ideas, or shifting existing ones to become more effective and increase chances of a business’ success. Innovation has become so essential for businesses to stay competitive, it fuels the success across the globe.
Measuring innovation results and their impact has not been something easy, it is done based on different metrics and should be carried out effectively and efficiently. Measurement must bring relevant information to the corporate management and must be done at a reasonable cost.
The Cornell University, Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires (INSEAD), and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in partnership with other organisations and institutions uses subjective and objective data derived from several sources since 2007 to create the The Global Innovation Index (GII), an annual ranking of countries by their capacity for, and success in innovation. The GII is commonly used by corporate and government officials to compare countries by their level of innovation. The GII is computed by taking a simple average of the scores in two sub-indices, the Innovation Input Index and Innovation Output Index, which are composed of five and two pillars respectively. Each of these pillars describes an attribute of innovation, and comprise up to five indicators, and their score is calculated by the weighted average method.
This year, Switzerland leads the list again, holding that title since 2011. The ranking used 81 indicators to analyze 130 economies, for innovation outputs like knowledge, technology and creativity, and third overall for innovation inputs like human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication and business sophistication. In addition, Switzerland regularly comes top globally for the number of patents filed per capita. High-income economies hold the top places in the global innovation ranking.
Switzerland excels also as a hotspot for machine learning; particularly the city of Zürich. The country has excellent universities like ETH Zürich, machine learning labs like Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull’Intelligenza Artificiale (IDSIA ) or Institut Dalle Molle d'intelligence artificielle perceptive (IDIAP), numerous Startups attacking thematic areas such as healthcare, fintech, and cybersecurity.Switzerland lives through strong communities, initiatives, and accelerators such as digitalswitzerland, Kickstart Accelerator, Venture Kick or Impact Hub. Google has a Zürich office and development center, an attractive Swiss tax system and high quality of living push innovation year after year. The attractive investment grounds, the size of funding rounds, and collaboration with strong companies is increasing and therefore the influence and reach of Swiss machine learning will also increase. Onedot as one of the leading providers of AI-powered data preparation technology is experiencing the same innovation needs and fulfils them.
The world’s most competitive economies in the field of innovation for the year 2018 are Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom and Singapore. USA, Finland Denmark, Germany, and Ireland follow. Asian countries ranking represents a breakthrough for an economy witnessing rapid transformation guided by government policy prioritizing research and development-intensive ingenuity. Notable is Israel, climbing for the top spots in the last years and for sure one country that will provide more innovations along with France, Canada, Norway and Australia.
See the complete WIPO Report here.
