Contents

Foreword 8

Acknowledgments 9

Advisory Committee 12

Advisory Committee members 12

Industry Association Network 13

Academic Network 14

The GII Partners 15

Preface 15

GII 2025 at a glance 17

Key takeaways 20

Global Innovation Tracker 27

Global Innovation Tracker Dashboard 28

Science and innovation investment 30

Technological progress 40

Technology adoption 43

Socioeconomic impact 48

Conclusion 50

Data notes 50

References 53

GII 2025 results 54

Innovation leaders in 2025 55

Innovation overperformers: a consistent group amid global competition 63

Innovation efficiency leaders: maximizing output from available inputs 65

Innovation across the world's regions 70

Conclusion 75

References 77

Cluster ranking 78

2025 GII Ranking of World’s Top 100 Innovation Clusters 79

Clusters by economy 82

Regional distribution 84

Beyond the top 100 87

Top innovation intensity clusters per capita 88

References 92

GII 2025 Economy briefs and profiles 93

Framework of the Global Innovation Index 2025 94

GII Economy briefs and the GII Innovation Ecosystems and Data Explorer 94

How to read the Economy profiles 95

Appendix I – Conceptual and measurement framework of the Global Innovation Index 236

Rationale and origins 236

Defining innovation in the GII 237

The GII conceptual framework 238

Adjustments to the GII model in 2025 240

Data limitations and treatment 241

Missing values 242

Treatment of series with outliers 242

Normalization 243

Weights 243

Strengths and weaknesses 243

Caveats on the year-to-year comparison of rankings 244

Appendix II - Joint Research Centre (JRC) statistical audit of the 2025 Global Innovation Index 245

Conceptual and statistical coherence within the GII framework 246

The impact of modeling assumptions on the GII results 252

Uncertainty analysis results 254

Sensitivity analysis results 260

Best-practice frontier in the GII by data envelopment analysis 261

Conclusion 264

References 265

Appendix III - Sources and definitions 267

1. Institutions 267

2. Human capital and research 269

3. Infrastructure 272

4. Market sophistication 274

5. Business sophistication 277

6. Knowledge and technology outputs 282

7. Creative outputs 285

Appendix IV – Global Innovation Index innovation cluster methodology 289

References 295