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The Global Innovation Policy Index

In the midst of intense global competition for innovation supremacy among countries, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation released one of the most comprehensive assessments ever undertaken of countries’ innovation policies.

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The Global Innovation Policy Index benchmarks the effectiveness of the innovation policies of 55 countries—including virtually all EU, OECD, APEC, and BRIC economies—and provides a framework for making effective policies.

The Policy Index assesses the countries against 84 indicators grouped across seven core innovation policy areas: 1) trade and foreign direct investment; 2) science and R&D; 3) domestic market competition; 4) intellectual property rights; 5) information technology; 6) government procurement; and 7) high-skill immigration.

The Index ranks countries as either upper tier, upper-mid tier, lower-mid tier, or lower tier on each of the seven policy areas and overall, and highlights best practices in policy development among these countries that other nations can learn from. Only Canada and Singapore placed in the upper tier on all seven innovation policy indicators, while the United States placed in the top tier in every category except openness to high-skill immigration. The report ranks 18 countries as upper tier, 15 as upper-mid tier, 13 as lower-mid tier, and 9 as lower tier in innovation policy.

The report says that countries will not be able to achieve sustainably high rates of innovation if their governments have not implemented a broad range of innovation-enabling policies that create the conditions in which organizations throughout their economies can successfully innovate.

About the ITIF
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank at the cutting edge of designing innovation strategies and technology policies to create economic opportunities and improve quality of life in the United States and around the world. Founded in 2006, ITIF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, non-partisan organization that documents the beneficial role technology plays in our lives and provides fact-based analysis and pragmatic ideas for improving technology-driven productivity, boosting competitiveness, and meeting today’s global challenges through innovation.

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