Global Innovation Index by Country 2024

The Global Innovation Index (GII) uses various metrics to show the overall innovation of a nation. This metric uses various factors to calculate the GII, including multiple subcategories of innovation input and output.

What the Global Innovation Index Means

The GII reflects the ability of a country to make innovations and how well the people in that nation follow through with creation. High GII values show countries that have systems in place to encourage the creation of novel ideas, methods, or products.

Countries that lack internal structures or innovation output have lower GII scores. While these countries may have some innovators within them, they do not meet the innovation performance of countries with higher GII values.

Innovation Input and Output in Calculating the Global Innovation Index

The GII comes from the average of the country's innovation input and output. However, each of these has multiple subcategories, which total 81 parameters in the metric.

The innovation input portion of the GII measures the factors within a country that encourage and promote innovation among its citizens. It examines five pillars within this area that each include three subsections. These five innovation input pillars include institutions, infrastructure, business sophistication, market sophistication, and human capital and research.

Innovation output only includes two pillars, which are creative outputs and knowledge and technology outputs. Despite having fewer subcategories of measurements than input, output has equal weight when calculating the GII for a country.

Countries with the Highest Global Innovation Indices

The most recent data in 2023 comes from 2022. That year, Switzerland topped the rankings of GII with a score of 64.6. This country topped the lists for both of its output subscores and placed second for its institutions.

Second place overall for GII went to the United States, which had a score of 61.8. The United States placed first in market innovation and third in both business sophistication and knowledge outputs.

The remaining countries in the top five GII rankings were Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.

Lowest Global Innovation Index

Per the data from 2022, the country with the lowest GII was Guinea, which had a score of 11.6. Out of 132 countries, Guinea had the lowest score for its human capital and research input pillar. Additionally, it placed at 131st in both market sophistication and infrastructure. These pillar ratings contributed to its overall score.