Global Innovation Index 2024: Costa Rica enters the Top 70

By IDEAS

Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, Singapore and the United Kingdom are the world’s most-innovative economies, while China, Türkiye, India, Vietnam and the Philippines1 are the fastest 10-year climbers, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Global Innovation Index (GII) 2024.

Now in its 17th edition, the GII is the world's benchmark resource charting global innovation trends to guide policy makers, business leaders and others in unleashing human ingenuity to improve lives and address shared challenges, like climate change. This year, the GII also looks at “social entrepreneurship,” which uses private-sector practices for positive social change.

"In 2023, we saw a decline in R&D expenditures, a reduction in scientific publications, and a scaling back of venture capital investments to pre-pandemic levels," said WIPO Director General Daren Tang. "However, technological progress remained strong in 2023, particularly in health-related fields like genome sequencing, as well as in computing power and electric batteries. Technology adoption also deepened, especially in 5G, robotics, and electric vehicles. This year’s GII also reveals positive trends in key indicators, including a decline in global poverty and rises in labor productivity and life expectancy," he added.

Regarding Latin America, Colombia (61st), Costa Rica (70th) and Paraguay (93rd) made the greatest headway in the region, with Costa Rica entering the top 70 worlwdide and ranking highly in Business Sophistication (49th) while being the regional leader in Labor Productivity Growth (10th) and ICT services exports (10th). 

The Government of Costa Rica has partnered with the State Department of the United States to explore opportunities to diversify and grow the global semiconductor ecosystem and create a more resilient, secure, and sustainable global semiconductor value chain. The United States views Costa Rica as a partner in ensuring the semiconductor supply chain can keep pace with the digital transformation underway. Products ranging from vehicles to medical devices increasingly rely on semiconductors as the building blocks of today’s economy. 

Last year the Costa Rican Government published modifications to its agricultural biotechnology regulations. The updated regulations were published in the Official Diary. The most relevant changes in the regulation are related to genome editing, which was not addressed in the earlier regulatory framework. Under the new regulation, Costa Rica would treat a wide range of products created with innovative biotechnologies as equivalent to conventional products.