Innovation is the cornerstone of economic competitiveness, underpinning productivity, creates high-value jobs, and drives prosperity.

Yet the Global Innovation Index 2025, published this month by the World Intellectual Property Organization, reveals that the world’s innovation system has entered a period of uncertainty.

For the past decade, innovation investment was booming with R&D spending expanding rapidly, venture capital increasing globally and new technologies impacting a range of sectors. Unfortunately, the picture now seems more fragile and whilst R&D is still rising, the rate of growth is its slowest rate since the financial crisis. Venture capital activity, outside of a handful of megadeals in artificial intelligence, has continued to contract for a third year in a row and international patenting has only just returned to modest growth after a rare decline.

The exception is science itself with global research output surging to a record two million articles in 2024, led by remarkable growth in China and India but whilst the knowledge base is expanding, the channels that turn that knowledge into commercial value are under pressure.

In addition, technology continues to advance with supercomputers breaking efficiency records, battery prices falling rapidly, and electric vehicles, robotics, and 5G becoming mainstream. However, adoption rates are slowing and electric vehicle growth is decelerating even before medium levels of market penetration are reached and whilst 5G now covers half the world’s population, expansion has slowed with access remaining highly unequal across the world.

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