Technological development is the ultimate support for economic growth in the long term. In the double dimension of productivity and the incorporation of technical progress, the countries of the region have been and continue to be structurally behind.
The Global Innovation Index 2021 showed that governments and companies in many parts of the world increased their investments in innovation amid the huge economic and human losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which reflects that there is an increasing awareness of the importance of new ideas to overcome the pandemic and guarantee economic growth after it.
However, the effects of the crisis have been very uneven across sectors, as evidenced by the Global Innovation Tracker, the new section of the Global Innovation Index. Companies whose products include software, Internet and communications technologies, the hardware and electrical equipment sectors, and pharmaceuticals and biotechnology increased their investments in innovation and increased their R&D efforts. On the contrary, the tracker showed a reduction in disbursements made by companies in the sectors most affected by the containment measures against the pandemic and whose business models are based on face-to-face activities, such as transport and travel. The Global Innovation Index 2021 shows that cutting-edge technological progress offers great prospects and the best example of this has been the rapid development of vaccines against COVID-19.
The world wants to recover from the pandemic and we know that innovation is essential to overcome the common challenges we face and build a better future. The Global Innovation Index is a unique tool to guide policymakers and businesses in making plans to emerge stronger from the pandemic.”
In its annual ranking of the world's economies in terms of innovation capacity and output, the Index shows that the ranking is systematically dominated by a few, mostly high-income economies. However, some middle-income economies such as China, Turkey, Viet Nam, India and the Philippines are gaining ground and changing the innovation landscape.
Switzerland, Sweden, the United States of America and the United Kingdom continue to lead the innovation rankings, all of which have been in the top 5 for the past three years. The Republic of Korea enters 2021 for the first time in the top 5, while four other Asian economies feature in the top 15, namely: Singapore (8), China (12), Japan (13) and Hong Kong (China). ) (14).
Investments in innovation reached an all-time high before the pandemic, with exceptional growth of 8.5% in 2019.
The Global Innovation Index is published annually and essentially provides performance benchmarks and ranks 132 economies based on their innovation ecosystems. The Index is based on a rich data set, the compilation of 81 indicators from international public and private sources, which goes beyond the parameters traditionally used to measure innovation, as the definition of innovation has been expanded. It is no longer limited to research and development (R&D) laboratories and published scientific articles, but has a more general and horizontal character that includes social, technical and business model aspects. For each country, a one-page profile is produced, recording that country's performance on all indicators relative to the rest of the countries in the Index. These profiles also highlight each country's innovation strengths and weaknesses relative to the others.