Iceland among twenty of the most innovative countries in the world
Iceland is in twentieth place on the Global Innovation Index 2022, the World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) list of the world's most innovative economies. Last year Iceland was 17th on the list and has fallen by three places. Switzerland, the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are the world’s most-innovative economies, according to the index, with China on the threshold of the top 10.
The Index is built on a rich dataset – the collection of 81 indicators from international public and private sources – going beyond the traditional measures of innovation since the definition of innovation has broadened. Iceland is in 12th place on the list of 39 European countries and scores higher than would be expected, based on the country's GDP. Iceland scored above average for Institutions, Infrastructure, Business sophistication, Knowledge and technology outputs and Creative outputs. Iceland is in 1st place when looking at ICT use, electricity output per inhabitant, gross domestic expenditure on research and development financed by abroad, the number of published scientific and technical articles per inhabitant and the number of national feature films per inhabitant. However, Iceland scores low for GDP/unit of energy use (129th place), domestic market scale (129th place), foreign direct investment inflows (127th place) and graduates in science and engineering (85th place). More information about Iceland's performance can be found here.
The report shows that research and development (R&D) and other investments that drive worldwide innovative activity continued to boom in 2021 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, but challenges are emerging in translating innovation investments into impact.
The GII finds that productivity growth PDF, GII 2022 special theme - normally spurred by increased innovation - has in fact stagnated. It also finds that current technological progress and adoption show signs of slowing growth despite the recent flourishing of R&D expenditure and venture capital investments. However, with more careful and attentive nurturing of innovation ecosystems, a new era of innovation-driven growth led by Digital Age and Deep Science innovation waves could take off.
About the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)The World Intellectual Property Organization is one of the organizations of the United Nations. Iceland has been a member of it since 1986. The organization is responsible for the agreements that create a uniform framework for intellectual property rights, e.g. international registration process, implementation application and registration and the role of intellectual property offices in each country. Various working groups are working on updating and modernizing the agreements and the procedures surrounding them. The Intellectual Property Office is represented at the meetings concerning trademarks, patents and design, and also attends the general assembly of the organization every year.
More on the Global Innovation Index 2022 on WIPO's website.