Switzerland is the most innovative economy in the world for the 14th consecutive year. Belgium remains in 23rd place in the ranking of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a UN agency.
Sweden is again in second place and the United States remains on the third step of the podium. Behind, Singapore gains one place, to the detriment of the United Kingdom, which now closes the top five.
In the top 10, South Korea is the country that has progressed the mostmoving from tenth place to sixth. This Asian country owes this rise not only to its high spending on research and development, but also, for example, to cultural innovation such as K-Pop, a popular Korean musical genre, explains Darren Tang, general director of the WIPO. South Korea’s rise has come at the expense of a series of European countries, each one a step lower: Finland (7th), the Netherlands (8th), Germany (9th) and Denmark (10th).
Belgium 23rd
In 23rd place, Belgium is only the 15th country in the Old Continent and is preceded by France, Estonia, Austria, Norway, Iceland, Luxembourg and Ireland. On the other hand, it is ahead of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Poland and several other Eastern European Member States.
Belgium’s strengths are R&D spending, number of researchers, software spending, companies offering training, number of years of study, highly qualified women in the workplace and employment knowledge-intensive. Among the weak points, WIPO cites in particular the net flows of foreign direct investments, the number of technical graduates from higher education, “e-participation” and the growth of labor productivity.
The strongest growth
The UN agency’s ranking also includes China, Turkey, India, Vietnam and the Philippines among the fastest growing countries over the last decade.
WIPO establishes its classification on the basis of 78 indicators, such as entrepreneurial climate, education and research or industrial design. In this edition, the organization also detects “dark clouds” in terms of innovation spending. These include venture capital, R&D spending and other investment indicators. The number of patents filed thus decreased for the first time since 2009 (minus 1.3%).
“In 2023, we saw a decline in research and development spending, a decline in scientific publications, and a decline in venture capital investments to pre-pandemic levels“, illustrated Darren Tan.
