Geneva (AFP) – Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou has overtaken Tokyo-Yokohama to become the world’s top cluster for innovation, the United Nations said Monday. The UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) reported that the Chinese cluster had leapfrogged its Japanese rival in its 2025 Global Innovation Index. The change at the top of the world’s 100 leading innovation clusters was due to WIPO broadening the criteria to include venture capital investments for formulating the annual rankings.
The UN agency dealing with patenting and innovation previously only used patent filing and scientific publishing data to identify local concentrations of world-leading innovation activity. “Venture capital investment activity helps capture how scientific and technological knowledge translates into start-up creation and, ultimately, new goods and services in the marketplace,” WIPO said. The agency noted that Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and Tokyo-Yokohama “make a massive contribution to global scientific publications and patenting outputs,” together accounting for nearly one in five patent applications filed globally.
Indian cities have seen significant advancements in this ranking, with San Jose-San Francisco now overtaking Beijing, Seoul, and Shanghai-Suzhou to claim third place. London has shot up from 21st to eighth place, while Bengaluru has likewise jumped from 56th place to 21st on the back of venture capital deals. “Innovation clusters form the backbone of strong national innovation ecosystems, helping to anchor and strengthen the journey from ideas to market,” said WIPO chief Daren Tang. The recalibrated rankings “highlight which clusters are turning scientific research into economic results.” Overall, the change in methodology has led to East Asian clusters dropping in rankings, while US clusters have made notable gains. The adjustment benefitted Indian clusters, while those in the European Union—where the venture capital markets are sometimes less vigorous than in the United States—have tended to see a decline.
According to WIPO, the top 100 innovation clusters are spread across 33 economies, uniting “top universities, researchers, inventors, venture capitalists, and research and development firms in driving forward breakthrough ideas.” By country, China led the ranking for the third consecutive year with the most clusters in the top 100, at 24, followed by the United States with 22 clusters. WIPO also mentioned that the clusters with the most innovation-intensive activity in proportion to population size were San Jose-San Francisco in the United States, followed by Britain’s Cambridge.
Here are the top 15 innovation clusters in 2025:
1. Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou (China)
2. Tokyo-Yokohama (Japan)
3. San Jose-San Francisco (United States)
4. Beijing (China)
5. Seoul (South Korea)
6. Shanghai-Suzhou (China)
7. New York City (United States)
8. London (Britain)
9. Boston-Cambridge (United States)
10. Los Angeles (United States)
11. Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto (Japan)
12. Paris (France)
13. Hangzhou (China)
14. San Diego (United States)
15. Nanjing (China)
© 2024 AFP
