Vietnam has continued to show progress in converting innovation input into output performance, climbing from 59th to 57th place, according to the Global Innovation Index (GII) in 2023.

Vietnam has continued to show progress in converting innovation input into output performance, climbing from 59th to 57th place, according to the Global Innovation Index (GII) in 2023. 

The country leapt two places in the GII in 2023, ranking 46th out of 132 countries and territories, according to a GII report released by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) on September 27.

According to the report, Vietnam continues to show progress in converting innovation input into output performance.

The country has jumped from 59th position last year to 57th position this year in terms of input level, while its output level rose one place to 40th position.

The GII input pillars include institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, and business sophistication.

Meanwhile, the output performance indicators are knowledge and technology outputs and creative output.

Particularly, the country has maintained second position among lower middle-income countries in the overall GII after India (40th). Among ASEAN countries, Vietnam is behind Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.

According to WIPO, the country is among the most impressive innovation climbers of the last decade.

Vietnam , continues to be one of the three record holders by being innovation overperformers for a 13th consecutive year, along with India and the Republic of Moldova.

This year, Vietnam ranks 33rd in the unicorn valuation, and 66th in research and development (R&D) expenditure.

However, some indicators remain at low levels. Although the ecological sustainability index group improved by three places compared to last year, the ranking is still very low, at 110th place.

Among them, the most notable is the environmental performance index ranked 130th, continuing to decrease by two places year-on-year. This is an index that has consistently had a low ranking since 2017.

Institutional issues still require significant improvement to create favourable conditions for socio-economic development based on science, technology, and innovation.

The rule of law index ranked 72nd, down two places.

The regulatory quality index, after improving 10 places from 93rd to 83rd last year, dropped to 94th place this year.

The GII is a set of tools to evaluate the global innovation capacity of countries in the world, reflecting the socioeconomic development model based on science, technology, and innovation.

Countries can see the overall picture as well as their strengths and weaknesses via these indicators.

Recently, the Government has used this set of indicators as one of the important management tools and has assigned ministries, agencies and localities to be jointly responsible for improving the index.

In particular, the Ministry of Science and Technology is in charge of monitoring and general coordination.

The country's GII has continuously improved from 2017 onwards, increasing from 59th position in 2016 to 42nd in 2019 and 2020, 44th in 2021, 48th in 2022, and 46th in 2023.

The GII takes the pulse of innovation against a background of an economic and geopolitical environment fraught with uncertainty. It reveals the most innovative economies in the world, ranking the innovation performance of around 132 economies while highlighting innovation strengths and weaknesses.

Envisioned to capture as complete a picture of innovation as possible, the index comprises around 80 indicators, including measures on the political environment, education, infrastructure and knowledge creation of each economy.

The different metrics that the GII offers help to monitor performance and benchmark developments against economies within the same region or income group./.