Newsroom » News
Iceland in 22nd Place in the 2024 Global Innovation Index
30. September 2024
Iceland ranks 22nd globally in the newly released Global Innovation Index (GII) 2024 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), dropping two places from last year. Iceland ranks 15th for Innovation Inputs but 29th for Innovation Outputs. The top five countries remain unchanged: Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. Among the 39 European nations, Iceland holds 14th place, performing slightly better than expected given its GDP per capita.
The GII is compiled from 78 different indicators that assess both innovation inputs and outputs. Iceland scores highest globally for Electricity output per capita, National feature films/mn pop. 15–69, Low-carbon energy use %, Scientific and technical articles/bn PPP$ GDP and VC recipients, deals/bn PPP$ GDP. It also ranks highly in Operational stability for businesses (3rd), Expenditure on education % GDP (5th), and School life expectancy years (7th). However, Iceland performs poorly in indicators such as Domestic market scale (128th), GDP per unit of energy use (126th), FDI inflows % GDP (119th), Creative goods exports (97th), Domestic Industrial diversification (96th), and % of graduates in science and engineering (96th).
The Nordic countries overall perform strongly, with Sweden in 2nd place, Finland in 7th, Denmark in 10th, and Norway just ahead of Iceland in 21st.
About the Global Innovation Index (GII)
The GII is published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in collaboration with the Portulans Institute and measures innovation performance across 130 economies using diverse indicators, serving as a benchmark for government policies on innovation.