Innosuisse
Swiss Innovation Agency

Innovation Ecosystem Monitor 2024

Mapping Switzerland's Innovation Strengths, Weaknesses and Their Evolution Over Time

What is the monitors purpose?

The goal of this monitor is to provide an overview of the competitiveness of Switzerland's innovation ecosystem in an international context and go into more detail where it is relevant to Innosuisse. The monitor aims to provide a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the Swiss innovation ecosystem and its development over time. Wherever possible the monitor links to reports that describe the findings in more detail. The report will be updated at least once a year after the publication of most indices in autumn.

From the abstract to the concrete

Switzerland regularly appears on top of international innovation rankings. These indices are constructed out of a multitude of indicators (and their selection influences the final ranking). The different indicators present different perspectives on the innovation ecosystem.

In the following the report will first take a bird's eye view and look at different innovation indices (see below ↓) and then will dive into detail and shed light on selected environment and framework conditions (menu on the left hand side ←).

This is a new version of a previously internal Innovation Ecosystem Monitor published in Q3/2024. Differences in the findings or more recent sources compared to this version are highlighted in light blue like this:   New  . There have been major updates to the R&D, the innovation activities and the start-up chapter and only minor updates to this introductory and the knowledge transfer chapter.

Switzerland maintains its position on top

's top position in the two most prominent international innovation rankings is stable. Generally, there is not a lot of movement among the top 10 countries in both the GII and the EIS index. Only and have made significant progress in the rankings.

The Economist's Impact Unit's Innovation Quotient (EIQ) shows that not all innovation indices put Switzerland on top (and that ranking positions can be influenced by the selection of indicators: Compare e.g. the , the or across the three rankings).

Why is Switzerland not on top in the EIQ?

While GII and EIS rely on a combination of quantitative statistical indicators, the EIQ additionally includes the judgement of business leaders. Furthermore, the EIQ's scope is broader than the others'. In the three main categories, Switzerland ranks 4th (socioeconomic environment), 17th (policy and compliance) and 10th (business considerations).

We haven't made a detailed comparison, but some choices are questionable from a Swiss perspective. A subcategory of "policy and compliance" where Switzerland fares worse than its competitors is "Education priorities". Here Switzerland's very high spending on education is set off against the lack of a national strategy on future skills (a sub-national competence in Switzerland), each accounting for 20% of the final score.

The Swiss S&T clusters are not top-ranked either.

Here, only Zurich region (rank 50, -1 compared to 2023) and Basel region (rank 96, +1 compared to 2023) rank among the top 100 Science & Technology-Clusters, behind among others Paris (12), London (21), Munich (22), Stuttgart (29).

The reason why Switzerland appears nonetheless at the top of the rankings as a country is twofold:

  1. The S&T-Clusters are - unlike the countries - not compared relative to their size, but in absolute terms. Consequently bigger clusters have an advantage.
  2. The concentration of S&T-Clusters in Switzerland is very high in relation to the rest of the country (and in contr-ast to other countries).

However, followers may be catching up

European Innovation Scoreboard Index Score 2017–2023

Its closest competitors in the European Innovation Scoreboard – , and – have made up substantial ground and are closing the gap. on the other hand has made only modest gains.

Switzerland's strengths and weaknesses

The European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) highlights Switzerland's greatest strengths in innovation as its universities' research output and the international composition of their student bodies / academic staff. Switzerland has recently shown significant progress in two crucial areas: venture capital availability and product innovation by SMEs. Notably, the long-declining trend in SME product innovation has reversed, showing positive momentum.

🦾 Relative strengths
Public-private co-publications
International scientific co-publications
Foreign doctorate students as a % of all doctorate students
⚠️ Relative weaknesses
Direct and indirect government support of business R&D
Environment-related technologies
SMEs introducing business process innovations
↗ Strong increases since 2017
Venture capital expenditures
Population involved in lifelong learning
SMEs introducing product innovations
↘ Strong decreases since 2017
SMEs introducing business process innovations
Employment in innovative enterprises
Environment-related technologies

Switzerland is one of the most competitive countries

New:    is also well positioned in other, less innovation focused rankings, such as IMD's competitiveness rankings, where it has recently made significant progress in both the competitiveness and the digital competitiveness ranking.

Sources

Other indices