I am very pleased to see that the UK has maintained a top 5 position in the Global Innovation Index (GII). The GII is a quantitative ranking produced by WIPO, Cornell University and INSEAD indicating how innovative a country is based upon the assessment of various areas of the economy.

Interestingly the main drivers for a high ranking in the GII for the UK are its market sophistication (e.g. access to venture capital and the level of competition) and its creative outputs (e.g. cultural & creative services exports). The UK is also ranked #1 in the world on the citable documents H index, which represents the number of citations that local research documents receive abroad. However, the UK is behind in areas such as spending on R&D (ranked #20 in the world in terms of % of GDP) and the number of PCT patent applications filed (ranked #20).