China broke into the world's top 20 most-innovative economies as Switzerland retained its number-one spot in the Global Innovation Index (GII) ranking published annually by Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Rounding out the GII 2018 top ten: The Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Singapore, United States of America, Finland, Denmark, Germany and Ireland.

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Now in its 11th edition, the GII is a detailed quantitative tool that helps global decision makers better understand how to stimulate the innovative activity that drives economic and human development. The GII ranks 126 economies based on 80 indicators, ranging from intellectual property filing rates to mobile-application creation, education spending and scientific and technical publications.

China's number 17 ranking this year represents a breakthrough for an economy witnessing rapid transformation guided by government policy prioritizing research and development-intensive ingenuity. While the United States fell back to number six in the GII 2018, it is an innovation powerhouse that has produced many of the world's leading hi-tech firms and life-changing innovations.

"China's rapid rise reflects a strategic direction set from the top leadership to developing world-class capacity in innovation and to moving the structural basis of the economy to more knowledge-intensive industries that rely on innovation to maintain competitive advantage," said WIPO Director General Francis Gurry. "It heralds the arrival of multipolar innovation".

Innovation achievers growing

A group of middle and lower-income economies perform significantly better on innovation than their level of development would predict.

Twenty economies comprise these 'innovation achievers' in 2018, three more than in 2017. The sub-Saharan Africa region boasts six innovation achievers, including Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa, while five economies hail from Eastern Europe. Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Viet Nam continue to move up the rankings, steering closer to regional powerhouses like China, Japan, Singapore, and Republic of Korea.

"Over time, a number of emerging economies stand out for being real movers and shakers in the innovation landscape, " said Soumitra Dutta, Former Dean and Professor of Management at Cornell University. "Aside from China, which is already in the top 25, the middle-income economy closest to this top group is Malaysia. Other interesting cases are India, Iran, Mexico, Thailand and Viet Nam which consistently climb in the rankings."