East Asia dominates, since it has four of the five most important scientific and technological centers in the world: one in Japan, two in China, one in the Republic of Korea, the 5th being located in the United States.
The global index published by WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, ranks the innovation capacity of around 130 countries each year. The objective in identifying the level of activity of local innovation hubs is to understand innovation processes and to promote innovation as a factor that creates jobs, investment and economic growth.
A few findings emerge from the 2022 ranking:
- Tokyo-Yokohama tops the ranking of the most important hubs, followed by Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou, Beijing, Seoul and San José-San Francisco.
- In proportion to their population, the Cambridge cluster in the United Kingdom and the Eindhoven region in the Netherlands are the clusters with the highest scientific and technological intensity. They are followed by the Daejon hub (Republic of Korea), San Jose-San Francisco and Oxford, UK.
- For the first time, China has as many leading science and technology hubs as the US, with 21 hubs each. Germany has 10 poles and Japan five.
- The strongest increases in the 2022 ranking are those of three Chinese hubs: Zhengzhou (+15), Qingdao (+12) and Xiamen (+12), followed by Berlin (+4), Istanbul (+4), Kanazawa (+ 4), Ankara (+3), Daegu (+3) in the Republic of Korea and Mumbai (+3) in India.
- New poles are emerging in East Asia, notably in China, Brazil, India, Iran and Turkey.
To learn more : The GII reveals the world’s top 100 science and technology (S&T) clusters and identifies the most S&T-intensive top global clusters.
